


The No Luck Club

by manic_intent



Category: Ant-Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Full Spoilers for Ant Man and IW, M/M, NOTE: MOST OF THIS FIC IS T-RATED, Post-Canon, That postcanon story where Jimmy is demoted after the events of Ant Man 2, and Kamala and friends try to fix it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-05
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-07 08:05:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 36,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15904257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: “Guys,” Kamala whispered, as Cindy worked on the top floor window latch of the house, “this is a really, really bad idea.” She was flattened between the sill and the next window, having stretched out her arms and legs to help lift Yukio up.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Was inspired to write this story after reading Totally Awesome Hulk #15-#18, aka Greg Pak’s Asian-American Superhero Team-up, for Jimmy Woo. Didn’t really like the ending but welp, it’s a cute story, especially #15, where they go out for food and fight over the bill. 
> 
> You won’t need to have read the issues or know the characters to understand this story. 
> 
> **DISCLAIMER** : I don’t normally read Marvel/DC comics—I don’t have the time and my to-read list is massive. Therefore I’m not actually familiar with any of these characters in their comics form and will be making things up to fit into the MCU. I don’t, for example, personally like Cindy Moon’s backstory at all… locking up a kid for years in effective solitary without telling her parents is normalising solitary imprisonment, semi-voluntary or not. Not all of the TAH chars will be in here because I’m not good at handling lots of chars in a single scene and not all of them fit the timeline yet.

“Guys,” Kamala whispered, as Cindy worked on the top floor window latch of the house, “this is a really, really bad idea.” She was flattened between the sill and the next window, having stretched out her arms and legs to help lift Yukio up. 

They weren’t really in full view of the street, but Kamala was starting to get hyper-conscious. She loved her costume—had made it herself—but in the daytime, her blue mask and her blue and red burkini costume with the gold lightning symbol maybe, okay, kinda stood out a little against the brick. 

“I kinda agree,” Yukio said. 

Cradled against Kamala’s preternaturally stretched arms, Yukio was watching the street, one hand on the hilt of her whip. At least her costume was a black coat, even if it was gorgeously fashionable. It made Yukio look like she’d just stepped off some avant-garde couture catwalk. It had _pockets_. Impossibly, she’d made it herself. Kamala had been inspired when she’d first met the pink-haired, endlessly peppy Japanese mutant, but her own costume-with-pockets project was still a work in progress. 

Cindy Moon—who preferred, fine, to be called _Silk_ when she was in costume—narrowed her eyes behind the black bandit mask that covered her face from her nose down. Her bob of dark hair was tucked back, barely brushing slim shoulders sheathed in a black costume with a webbing pattern in the front. She’d also made it herself, not that you could tell on a first glance. Nothing about Cindy was inefficient. “Well, the two of you agreed to come with me when I first proposed this plan, so—“ With a jerk of her wrist, she unlocked the window and pulled it up, “—ladies, get in formation or go home.” 

“If we get caught, Jimmy is going to be so mad,” Kamala said sadly. “My _parents_ are going to be so mad.” 

“The Professor won’t be mad, but he’d be disappointed,” Yukio said. She pulled a face. “It’s usually worse.” 

“My mum’s been mad ever since I decided to join the Protectors Initiative, so, I’m already ahead of you guys.” Cindy slipped through the window, looking around. “Clear.” 

“Hey, you have spider senses right?” Kamala whispered, as she helped Yukio through the window and scrolled herself in behind her. “That means we’re OK? Right?” 

“It goes on the fritz,” Cindy admitted. 

They were so going to get caught. “Great,” Kamala said. She eased herself back to her normal size. The house they’d just broken into looked and sounded empty. Looked normal too—like any other old, small house in this pocket of suburbia outside San Francisco. There was a pervasive, vaguely familiar faint smell that Kamala couldn’t quite pin down.

“Eau de boy,” Yukio said. At Kamala’s blink, Yukio giggled. “You know, boy’s rooms. A lot of them have this er. Old laundry smell. Or worse.” 

Cindy wrinkled her nose under her mask. “Ugh, really?” 

“Must be nice to be an only child,” Kamala said, though she didn’t really mean it. Annoying as her brother Aamir could be, he was family. “My brother’s room doesn’t smell like this.” 

“Don’t you live with your parents?” Yukio asked as she padded light-footed down the corridor, peeking into the first room. “Your mum probably has that handled.” 

“Speaking of your brother, didn’t Jimmy want him on the team?” Cindy asked. She checked another room. 

“Ugh, don’t remind me,” Kamala said. For once she was glad that her older brother’s many weird social hangups had kept him from signing on. 

They were coming out to a banister, overlooking the ground floor. It was, perhaps unsurprisingly given the smell and the owner, a mess. Old clothes were left on the couch. Unwashed cups of coffee keeping solemn watch at the corners of couches. There were tiny little kids’ toys strewn here and there—an old stuffed unicorn, a pop-up book. Cindy climbed down the wall, sticking easily to it as she peered around the rest of the ground floor upside down. “Clear,” she said. 

“This place looks seriously normal to me,” Kamala said. Depressingly normal, even. “You guys sure we have the right place?” 

Yukio yelped something in Japanese and backpedaled right into Kamala. They would’ve overbalanced into a heap if Kamala hadn’t grabbed the banister in time. Cindy darted back up at the sound and let out a badly stifled scream. A hairy, gigantic _ant_ was coming out of a room at the end of the corridor. It was as big as a _pony_. Its antennae twitched in the air as it looked at them with its multifaceted eyes, jaws clacking. 

Kamala swallowed the bile in her throat. “That is _gross_.” 

The ant took a menacing step forward, breaking the spell. Yukio scrambled to her feet, flicking out her whip. Cindy was faster—she shot webbing that immobilised the ant to the walls and floor. It made a horrible chittering sound as it twisted and struggled ineffectively. 

“So gross,” Cindy agreed, wide-eyed. She was pulling out her phone. 

“You’re really going to Instagram this?” Kamala said, setting her hands on her hips. 

“C’mon, people will never believe us if we don’t. It’ll get us out of trouble. If we get caught. Which we won’t.” Cindy took a pic of the ant, then hustled them into a quick little group photo. As she checked the shot, Yukio sidled closer to the ant. She reached for something on its belly and the ant abruptly disappeared. 

Cindy spun around at Kamala’s hiss of shock. “What? Where’d it go?”

“Down there.” Yukio pointed down at the ground. Something scuttled away under the webbing and was lost into the carpet pile. She held up a metallic disk in a gloved hand. “Pym tech?” 

Kamala whooped. “That should do it. All right! Good work team. Let’s go.” 

“We should finish searching the house,” Cindy said.

“There could be more humongous ants,” Kamala said. Her stomach cramped a little at the thought. “Uggh. Or worse.” 

“Like what?” Yukio asked.

“Like a giant spider. _Ergh_. Oh. Sorry Cin—uh, Silk.” 

“If I ever saw a giant spider I would probably scream,” Cindy admitted, completely deadpan. “If you don’t scream when you see a giant spider, you’re probably the spider.” 

“The Shelob scene really grossed me out,” Kamala admitted. “Oh, that’s um, in—”

“I _love_ Lord of the Rings,” Yukio gushed. 

“The Fellowship and Thorin's Company are too much of a sausage fest,” Cindy said. She hesitated, then said sheepishly, “But LoTR and the Hobbit are the only DVDs I own. The Director’s Cut.”

“I haven’t seen the Director’s Cut of the Hobbit.” Kamala stretched herself out so she could walk over the spider webbing and checked the last of the rooms. There was a bathroom with visible grout and a bedroom with an unmade bed. “Nobody here.”

“Really haven’t seen it? Hey, we should do that for a team night thing. Petition Jimmy. Rather than have to listen to lectures about responsibility or get introduced to random older people who’d just forget us in the next minute.” Cindy shot Yukio a cheeky grin as Yukio sighed. “C’mon. I totally saw you dozing off the last time.” 

“I wasn’t dozing off!” Yukio blushed a little. “I just had a late night. Ellie thinks this whole Protectors thing is silly anyway.”

Ellie was Yukio’s incredibly cool goth(?) girlfriend, who’d once tagged along when they’d done a no-masks no-adults ice-cream meetup, a couple of weeks after ‘The Protectors’ had been officially formed. “I’d bet,” Kamala said. 

“I don’t think it’s silly,” Yukio said. She was heading downstairs. “I think you guys are fun. Besides. I’m the only Asian student left in the School right now. Everyone else is nice but. You know. I like being around you guys. It’s different.” 

“At least you get to go to a school with nice kids and your kickass girlfriend,” Cindy said from somewhere downstairs. “I _hate_ school. Urgh. I swear, every time some asshole makes fun of how my lunch ‘smells funny’ I feel like webbing them to the ceiling.” 

Kamala stretched out a leg to the ground floor so she could bypass the stairs, shrinking down next to the couch. Yukio sniffed the air and walked over to the kitchen, peeking in. She backed out, dropping her voice. “Somebody was home. There are half-eaten biscuits on a plate in the kitchen.” 

“Or they popped out for a bit.” Cindy did a circuit of the ground floor. 

“Or got eaten by the ant,” Kamala said.

“Ew, and, no, didn’t see blood anywhere.” Cindy made a face. “Anyway, let’s just do a quick last search and—” She jumped as someone knocked on the front door. “Shit!” Cindy hissed. “Hide!” 

Yukio peeked through the eyehole. To Kamala’s sheer astonishment, she flicked the deadbolt and opened the door. Kamala’s heart sank. Standing in the doorway with his arms folded was Agent Jimmy Woo, dressed as always in a black suit and tie. He looked tired and annoyed as he glanced between them. 

“Busted,” Cindy said. 

“Yukio!” Kamala complained. 

“What? He knew we were here. How else did he find us so quickly? We’ve got trackers in our Protector communicators.” Yukio patted hers in her pockets. “I took mine apart on the first day to take a look at it.” 

Kamala facepalmed. “You _could_ have mentioned that earlier? Maybe?”

Yukio frowned. “Why?”

Cindy patted Yukio on the shoulder. “We need to have a long talk.” She beamed at Jimmy. “Hi! Um. We were just going to look for you?”

“You’re trespassing on private property,” Jimmy said, very dryly, “and breaking and entering. Knowing you young ladies, I’m guessing there’s also been some property damage.”

Cindy threw up her hands. “Aww c’mon! We found a thing. Yukio, show him.” Yukio obligingly passed Jimmy the device they’d found on the ant. 

Jimmy sighed. He didn’t take it. “Where’d you find that?”

“Upstairs. On a _huge_ ant. _Yuuge_.” Kamala patted the air near her head to indicate height. “It was so gross. Blech.”

That made Jimmy’s mouth twitch faintly. “Well, put the device back roughly where you found it and let’s go.” 

“That’s it?” Cindy demanded, incredulous. 

“The three of you are in a lot of trouble,” Jimmy said, staring evenly at her until she grumbled and looked away. 

“We just wanted to help,” Kamala muttered. 

Jimmy glanced at her. “Help doing what?” 

“You used to head California’s FBI Powers Division,” Yukio said softly. 

Jimmy froze briefly. “Who told you that? Nevermind. Come on. We’re leaving.” 

Cindy straightened up and folded her arms. Kamala knew that look. Hastily, she grabbed Cindy by her elbow. “Okay. Okay. Let’s go,” Kamala said, with a placating smile. “Guess this was a mistake.” 

“No, it’s not! You were demoted because you couldn’t pin Scott Lang as the Ant Man, right? That’s proof right there.” Cindy jerked her chin at the device. “And we have a pic of the big ant upstairs. I bet there’s more stuff in this house. Isn’t that probable cause for a search?” 

“Young lady, you are a real terror,” Jimmy said. With a final searching glance over their shoulders, Jimmy turned on his heel and walked down to the road. He turned once he was by his car and looked at them. “Coming?” 

“Ugggh! See if we try to help you again,” Cindy growled. She stalked off after Jimmy and got into the back seat with a scowl. Yukio followed suit, but Kamala didn’t miss how she quietly slipped the piece of Pym tech back into her pocket. 

Jimmy was lecturing them in the car about responsibilities, which Kamala had heard before many times from her mother, so she tuned him out and sent a message to their Whatsapp group chat instead. 

**Kamala** : icu  
**Cindy** : ?  
**Yukio** : have idea  
**Cindy** : ???  
**Kamala** : she didn’t put the thingy back  
**Cindy** : wow bad girl  
**Cindy** : ♥ ilu ♥  
**Yukio** : (´・ω・｀)

“Are the three of you even listening?” Jimmy asked from the driver’s seat. 

“Yes,” they chorused, in varying degrees of enthusiasm. 

Jimmy eyed them wearily via the rearview mirror. “I know it’s hard. Especially the way the world is now. After… what happened. But the best thing the three of you can do now is stay out of trouble, okay?” 

“It’s been months,” Cindy said. She slumped back in the car seat, hugging herself. “I miss my dad.” 

Yukio hugged Cindy. Yukio had lost both her parents—and most of her extended family. Most of the other kids in Xavier’s School, even. Kamala looked out of the window at the empty streets, at the few fearful people who ducked indoors as their car went past. Now that they were out of the weird house with the giant ant, reality was settling back down in an ugly cloud. For a brief hour, they’d managed to forget. They’d pretended to be superheroes in a world where they could change something. Even that hadn’t worked out so well. 

Kamala had been lucky. She still had her family to go home to. But her friends... she’d lost most of them. Even her local imam, Sheikh Abdullah. The Avengers had failed, that’s all Kamala knew. They’d failed and half the world had died. Everyone was still picking up the pieces. 

Jimmy had pulled up by the sidewalk. He twisted around in his seat to look soberly at them. “I did get demoted because of circumstances,” Jimmy said, clearly choosing his words with care, “but it was necessary at the time.” 

“I saw the footage. It was all over YouTube too,” Yukio said. Her eyes were a little narrowed. “I was wondering. If you suspected Scott Lang of being the Ant Man, why didn’t you just station a surveillance team outside his house? Ready to check in on him at any moment?”

Jimmy smiled mirthlessly. “Circumstances.”

“Involving what happened in Germany?” Cindy demanded. 

Jimmy frowned at her. “How'd you know about that?”

“Google, _duh_.” Cindy said, scowling. “There’s like, a whole subreddit on the Avengers and stuff. It’s not hard to figure shit out.” 

“Digital generation,” Jimmy said ruefully, as though to himself. “All right. Yes. Certain leeways were given, while procedure was followed in a minimal way. And when someone had to take the fall for the damage done to the harbour, I did. _But_ —” Jimmy raised his voice as Cindy and Kamala started to protest, “—I don’t regret it for an instant.” 

Kamala and the others looked at each other. “Nope, don’t get it,” Kamala said, suspicious. “You went from being boss of a whole division in the FBI to babysitting a bunch of kids.” 

Jimmy chuckled and started up the car again. “You guys aren’t so bad. I’m a youth pastor. Can’t do that without liking kids.” 

“There’s no way you can say that in a non-creepy way at your age,” Cindy told him. 

“…Most of the time,” Jimmy muttered.

#

Time passed strangely when you were sub-atomic. Bodily processes slowed down too. Not having to eat, drink, or pee had its benefits, but it also completely threw out Scott’s idea of time. He could’ve been in here for hours. Months. Years.

Some days it was all he could do not to curl up in a ball somewhere and scream into his helmet, into the dead static of the comm. He just had to stay calm, he knew that. Something had obviously gone wrong on the outside. They shouldn’t have fucking used shrunken-down tech jammed into the back of a tacky van to go sub-atomic when the last time it’d taken a fucking shuttle and a reactor as big as half a basketball court. Of course something had gone wrong.

And of course Hope would fix it. Hope would fix anything. Besides, the Pyms were nothing if persistent. Hank had spent pretty much his entire life trying to get Janet back. Surely he’d spend at least a few years on Scott, right?

Right? 

And shit, Cassie. Scott swore that if he ever got out of this, he was never going to get involved in experimental tech ever again. Ever. _Ever_. 

Scott spent the time building himself a good spot. Best he stayed put where he’d landed. Make it easier for the rest to find him. He’d found some debris and dragged it over to make a hut. Dug out some fortifications in the strange spongy ground. And then, just because he could, he’d made decorations. Doodled some of the tardigrades with sharper debris. He’d gotten good at identifying them. 

Pity he’d also gotten too used to how they ignored him. Which was how he ended up in his current situation. Scott had done his best. Tried to hide. Then he’d tried to fight back. But tardigrades were hardy as fuck and New Guy was trying its best to eat him and Scott was starting to tire out, breathing hard. He flattened himself on the ground as the tardigrade angled past, its many-mouthed teeth wide in its misshapen body with its stumpy, clawed feet. It twisted in the air with balletic grace, coming in for a second pass, tendrils flaring on its many-folded body. 

Scott tried to scramble to his feet. He grabbed the tardigrade by the edges of its mouth, trying to hold it away from him, and there was a popping sound in his ears, the world growing, blurring—

—Screams. 

“ _What the fuck is that?_ ” Someone yelled to the right. Hands were dragging Scott away from the tardigrade, and he struggled for a moment before he stumbled to his feet. The monstrous thing rolled on the roof, making a thin whistling sound as it crushed itself against the van and Hank’s tech. Bright sparks—a pink-haired girl was lashing it with what looked like an electric whip, and a masked girl was webbing it to the ground. 

“It’s a tardigrade!” This was from a dark-haired boy ducked behind the line of dusty equipment still attached to the van with cables. Kid had to be in high school—he was dressed like it, with a t-shirt and jeans, cradling a laptop to his chest as he fumbled for his phone. “Oh man. This is awesome.” 

“Not you too, Ned!” This was from the girl who’d pulled Scott away from the tardigrade. She came up to his shoulder at best, and she was masked, in a blue and red uniform. 

“This is one of the coolest days of my life,” Ned muttered, ignoring her. “Um, maybe Yukio shouldn’t get that close though.”

“It’s dying,” Presumably-Yukio said. The pink-haired girl was standing the closest to the slow-thrashing tardigrade. “It’s not built to sustain this kind of mass at this size. It’s crushing itself.”

“Why didn’t that happen to the really gross ant?” asked the masked girl. 

“Excuse me,” Scott said, a little offended on his ants’ behalf. “I don’t know if a spider person should be calling ants gross. Are you related to Spiderman by the way? Nice kid.” 

The girl rolled her eyes. Oops. On closer inspection, she was Asian. “Maybe he never saw Spiderman without his mask off, Silk,” Ned said. 

“Whatever,” Silk said. 

Scott looked around. “Where’s everyone—” He yelped as the blue-masked girl grabbed his arm in an arm lock. 

“Sorry about this,” she said apologetically, “but you’re under arrest? Uh. Am I meant to read him his rights or something? If it’s a citizen’s arrest?” 

Scott didn’t have time for that. He tried to reach for his belt to shrink down, but found his free hand webbed to his chest. Silk’s mask crinkled in the impression of a smirk. “Ah-ah. Miss Marvel, scootch over a bit. There.” Scott’s other hand was now webbed to his back. Silk shoved him down onto his ass with surprising strength.

“Look,” Scott said, trying to sound reasonable, “thanks for rescuing me, but I’m kind of busy.” 

“Criminals don’t get to talk. Shut up or I’ll web your mouth,” Silk said. 

Miss Marvel was busy searching something on her phone. “Google doesn’t tell me whether civilians are meant to Mirandise people,” she said doubtfully. “I guess we should anyway? Uh. You’ve got the right to remain silent,” she told Scott conscientiously. “Anything you say can be used against you?” 

Silk sighed loudly. “Are we done? Anyway. Good work team. Yukio for finding a backdoor into the Pym private cloud through the tracker they had in the thingy. And Ned here for figuring out this van thingy. And… Miss Marvel for making sure the perp didn’t get nommed by this really gross monster. Seriously dude,” Silk told Scott, “do you just like gross things or what? There was this really big ant in your house. It was _yuuge_. Blech.” 

“Sooo, do we… pass this guy to the police station?” Yukio asked. “Or do we just call Jimmy?”

“I’ve always wanted to do the Batman thing of stringing up someone outside a police station,” Silk said wistfully, “but chances are they’d cut him loose and he’d escape.” 

“ _Look_ ,” Scott said loudly, and flinched as Silk took a picture of him and tapped at her phone. 

“OK. All sent.” She webbed him firmly to the ground. “I’ll watch him. You guys can Instagram Story the gross monster to your hearts’ content.”

“Tardigrade,” Ned mumbled, even as he took a selfie with a peace sign next to the twitching creature. 

The tardigrade had expired by the time someone burst through the roof entrance. The kids tensed, then relaxed. Scott peered up. Shiny shoes. Suit and tie. Cute, middle-aged Asian guy… Ah hell. “Agent Woo?” Scott said, incredulous. 

“Hey Jimmy,” Silk said, with a wave. 

Jimmy gave Scott a quick glance, then the kids an exasperated stare. “What is _that_?”

“Tardigrade,” the kids said, in varying degrees of confidence. 

Jimmy rubbed a hand slowly over his face. “I don’t even. What the heck.” 

“We traced the Pym Tech to here and found all this equipment hooked up to the van so we cracked the password on that and figured stuff out,” Miss Marvel said. She hesitated. “Or rather, Yukio and Ned did all that. I brought snacks.”

“They were good snacks,” Ned said loyally. Yukio nodded vigorously.

“And then there was this big monst—er, tardigrade—which we took care of _and_ we caught the guy you were trying to catch,” Silk said. 

“I told you guys to leave things be.” Jimmy knelt down beside Scott, slipping a knife out from his sleeve and cutting Scott free. “Sorry about this, Mister Lang. You’re free to go. If you want to press charges—”

“What!” Silk yelped. 

“Uh, no. No.” Scott got to his feet, ignoring Jimmy’s outstretched hand. “I mean, if not for these guys I’d have been stuck in there? Er.” 

“You probably should head to Avengers HQ and report in,” Jimmy said politely, avoiding his eyes. 

“Oh. Right. Sure.” Scott hesitated.

“Wait a minute,” Miss Marvel said incredulously, “Giant Ant guy is an _Avenger_? The subreddit had him pegged as a bad guy! Like the weirdo vulture guy who fought Spiderman! He's an ex-con! What was he doing under house arrest then?” 

Yukio started to giggle. “Oh, I see.” 

“No way!” Silk glared at Scott. “I don’t believe that. He had that thing in his house! His house smells of old socks! And he got you demoted. His… his costume is weird!” 

“All right, that’s enough,” Jimmy said sharply. “Silk, I want you to apologise to Mister Lang right now.” 

“You can’t be serious,” Silk shot back. 

“I am serious. Apologise.” 

Silk clenched her hands. In a sudden burst of motion, she leaped for the edge of the roof and out into the air. Scott yelped, lunging over, about to shrink down and call an ant, but he hesitated as he saw her sling webbing out to an adjoining building, swinging out of sight. Jimmy exhaled, exasperated. 

“Sorry,” Miss Marvel said in a small voice. She hung her head. 

“Okay firstly, there’s nothing to be sorry about,” Scott said quickly. “Thanks. And I’ll also like to thank uh, Silk? When she’s done being rightfully pissed off.” Scott stared at Jimmy. “I mean, these kids saved me. What the hell happened out here anyway?” 

Jimmy stared at him, surprised. “Oh. You don’t…? Of course you don’t. You should go. Get a debrief from Rogers.” 

“Sure. If these guys aren’t in trouble. For. Saving my ass,” Scott said pointedly. The kids stared at him in surprise.

Jimmy’s mouth twitched. “No. They’re not in trouble. This time,” he said, very dryly. 

“Just checking,” Scott said cautiously, “but am _I_ in trouble?” 

There was something strange in Jimmy’s expression as he glanced at Scott. “I think the world’s rather beyond that right now.”

#

**Kamala** : cindy  
 **Kamala** : u ok?  
 **Cindy** : yeah  
 **Cindy** : I h8 jimmy sometimes  
 **Yukio** : (´。＿。｀)  
 **Cindy** : u guys ok?  
 **Yukio** : yeah  
 **Kamala** : scott was nice  
 **Kamala** : he kinda made jimmy promise we weren’t in trouble  
 **Cindy** : yeah jimmy called and said.  
 **Cindy** : ned ok?  
 **Yukio** : yup. we’ve been talking  
 **Yukio** : amadeus has an idea about the disappearances  
 **Kamala** : deus always has ideas  
 **Cindy** : bad ones  
 **Yukio** : （⌒▽⌒）  
 **Yukio** : ned and I are helping  
 **Kamala** : cool  
 **Kamala** : keep us posted 


	2. Chapter 2

Jimmy found Scott in a quiet bar some distance from his house, nursing a beer at the counter. Like most businesses post-Thanos, its windows had been reinforced against looters with boarding and bars. The price of alcohol had been jacked up several times in the scrawled menu board hung over the bar. There wasn’t much on offer anyway. The first month after what SHIELD was calling ‘The Snap’ had been a near-global pandemic of social collapse and rioting. 

Scott didn’t look up when Jimmy took a seat next to him. “I feel like Rip van Winkle,” he said, staring at his beer. “Waking up to a world where everything’s a fucking nightmare.” 

Jimmy nodded. “I’m sorry about your family.”

“Cassie, Maggie… hell, you know, Paxton had to be checked into rehab. For alcoholism. One of the few remaining rehab centres still working. He didn’t want to talk to me.” 

“Give him time.” Jimmy had been the one who had checked Paxton into rehab. Anonymously. Like all other deep cover SHIELD agents who’d been reactivated before Director Fury had disintegrated, Jimmy had followed procedure. Checking in on a list of pre-assigned assets. Scott had just been one of them, albeit one of the lower priorities. By the time Jimmy had the time to look for Scott and look up what had happened to Scott’s extended family, the damage had been done. 

Scott gave him an unfocused stare. “I’m not an alcoholic,” he slurred.

“I’m aware.” Jimmy ordered an overpriced beer for himself. 

“What’re you doing here? Thought you were only babysitting Asian superpowered kids.” Scott blinked rapidly as Jimmy went still, and then he flushed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to say it like looking after them was a chore or something. Those kids are great.”

“They’re a handful is what they are,” Jimmy said, though he smiled. 

“Silk still mad with you?”

“She gets angry with me at least once a week.” The beer arrived. Jimmy sipped it and tried not to make a face. He wasn’t a fan of alcohol in general—it was a well-known carcinogen—but he appreciated the social ritual. “She’s dealing with a lot. Everyone is.” 

Scott stared at him uncertainly. “You okay?”

Jimmy tried a reassuring smile. “Got off easy. Didn’t have family to lose.” 

“Okay,” Scott said gently. Jimmy looked away, taking a sip of his beer to cover it. This was the real reason why Jimmy found Scott Lang dangerous. Wasn’t his love of illegal and experimental technology. The man was unselfconsciously handsome and paired it with a magnetic sort of empathy. He was devastatingly likable. Even without secret SHIELD orders to make sure that the FBI went easy on Scott, Jimmy would’ve been tempted to let Scott get away with everything anyway.

“Are you going to be all right by yourself?” Jimmy asked. 

Scott stiffened. “Cap said I should move into HQ. Until everything gets sorted out. Yeah, if fucking ever.” He drank a gulp of beer in a sharp jerk. “I can’t even. I mean, how’s everything just. Moving on? Half the world’s fucking _gone_.”

“Half the universe,” Jimmy corrected. 

Fingers tightened convulsively over Scott’s glass. “God, I can’t even imagine that. Can’t even imagine my own neighborhood. Most of it’s dark.” 

“We’ve had months to try and process. To get things under as much control as we can manage. You haven’t. This is all new to you.” Jimmy studied the grief written tense in Scott’s shoulders, in his cloudy eyes. “I also think that you should go back to HQ.”

“They sent you out here to fetch me, huh?” Scott’s mouth curled into a brief gash. “Silk said you got demoted because of me. That true?”

“Yes? Doesn’t matter now.” 

“I’m sorry anyway.” Scott drained his glass and stared at the dregs. “God, I’m such a fuck-up. Some Avenger I am, getting stuck sub-atomic while my friends were fighting for the universe. They… you know, they didn’t even think about calling me? When all that business with Vision was going down? Cap wasn’t even apologetic about it. Said he was working with what he had on hand and hindsight wasn’t helping anyone. Nearly punched him.” 

Jimmy inclined his head. “Your frustration’s justified. But he’s right. Hindsight doesn’t help.” 

“Maybe Hope and I couldn’t have been much help against a goddamn alien invasion and whatever but. I dunno. Maybe I’m just angry because helping would’ve let me feel less helpless. Look at me. I survived and I’m fucking even that up by being selfish and drunk.” 

“You’re not selfish. Come on. You should go home.” Jimmy signaled the bartender to bring some water. 

“Don’t wanna be alone,” Scott said, near inaudibly. He drank the water in several gulps when it was passed over though, coughing afterward. “Electricity and utilities got cut off to my place anyway. Unpaid bills and the end of the world, eh?” 

“You can stay at mine until that’s sorted out,” Jimmy said quickly, before he could regret it. “Did you drive here?” 

“Walked. Car battery was dead.” Scott didn’t move, blinking slowly at Jimmy. “You sure? I could check into a hotel or something. Was what I was planning.” 

“It won’t be any trouble,” Jimmy lied. He finished his beer and got to his feet, only to hesitate. People were drifting closer from the dim corners of the bar, grizzled and in days-old clothes, flushed with drink. 

“Avenger, huh?” asked someone to the left, a mountain of a florid guy with a huge beard. “You guys done fucked up.” 

“Guessing we did.” Scott looked up. 

“The fuck’s the point about you people then?” growled someone else to the left in a red flannel shirt. “Seen your fancy building, all that fancy tech. What’s the point of all that money if you can’t even protect us?” 

Jimmy reached for his badge, but Scott grabbed his hand, slipping a little unsteadily off his chair. He walked right up to flannel shirt guy. Scott wasn’t that tall—he came up to the guy’s chin, maybe. “You wanna hit me? Come on. Hit me.” 

Flannel guy flinched back a step. “What?”

“World’s fucked up and it looks like you need to let something out, hm? Hit me.” 

“Scott,” Jimmy said. He grasped Scott’s elbow and held on as Scott tried to shrug him off. “Let’s go.” It took a few tugs before Scott let Jimmy pull him out of the bar. Thankfully nobody followed them as Jimmy dragged Scott to his car and hustled him into the front passenger seat. Once they were safely on the road, Jimmy said, “Mind telling me what that was about?”

Scott had his eyes squeezed shut. “I’m a failure.”

“You’re drunk.” 

“Also a failure.” 

“That’s survivor’s guilt. You weren’t there. Neither was I. Am I a failure as well?” 

Scott flinched and stared at Jimmy. “I didn’t mean that.” 

“Doesn’t matter that you didn’t. To be honest, I feel that way sometimes. Most days,” Jimmy said. He wanted to reach over and squeeze Scott’s hand as Scott’s face crumpled with grief all over again, but the moment passed as Scott turned to look at the road. Jimmy kept his hands on the wheel and picked his way through the dark streets. 

Home was an apartment that was a few blocks away from the FBI’s San Francisco HQ. Scott was semi-conscious by the time they got there, and had to be hauled into the lift and poured into the guest room’s bed. He made a small noise as Jimmy got his shoes off, but was asleep by the time Jimmy racked both their shoes. Closing the door to the guest room, Jimmy dragged himself off to bed.

#

Scott woke up in an unfamiliar bed and panicked for a moment before he remembered. Embarrassed and a little disgusted with himself, he crawled out of bed and peeked out of the door. He could smell butter sizzling, and his stomach growled as he looked out into a neat apartment. Minimal and chic, walls hung with understated art and a few framed photographs. The kitchen was beyond the living room, where Jimmy looked like he was making breakfast.

Jimmy glanced over—Scott must’ve made a sound. “Feeling up to breakfast?” Jimmy asked. Scott tried not to gawk. He’d never seen Jimmy out of a suit. Jimmy in a plain tee and an honest-to-Gods _apron_ felt completely surreal. Domestic. 

Scott rubbed his eyes. At least he didn’t get hangovers. “Um, if it’s not too much trouble.” 

“Not at all. Bathroom’s the next door down. There’s a spare towel and toothbrush. I think we’re roughly the same size, so you can borrow some clothes if you want or wear what you’ve got, whatever works." 

“Thanks.” Scott slunk quickly over to the bathroom to get washed up. Borrowing clothes felt like presuming way too much on Jimmy’s charity, but the shirt Jimmy had left out made Scott grin, despite himself. It was a Watchmen shirt, the bloodied smiley face bright against black. 

By the time Scott made it to the kitchen, Jimmy was setting out plates of waffles. “Coffee or tea?” Jimmy asked, distracted as he set out cutlery. 

“Whatever you’re having.” Scott sat at the dining table where indicated and grinned. “Who watches the Watchmen?” 

Jimmy actually flinched and glanced up. His ears reddened. “Oh. I just picked the first shirt that was probably large enough out of my drawers. Er, that’s old.” 

“Aww, you’re embarrassed? Don’t be embarrassed. I liked the comics too. You’re a comics fan?” 

“I used to be.” Jimmy set a mug of coffee down before Scott and a plate of waffles along with a bottle of maple syrup. “No milk,” Jimmy said apologetically. “Fresh consumables are really expensive right now. Scarce, too.”

“I’m leeching off you right now, so I’m not sure why you’re apologising,” Scott said, making a show of eating his waffles. It tasted good, but eating felt like he was fighting his stomach. At least it didn’t feel today like breathing itself needed sheer effort. When he’d gotten the debrief from Captain America—twice, because he didn’t believe it the first time—and then he’d found out about Maggie and Cassie. He drank some coffee as his eyes stung, and looked up to Jimmy watching him. 

Jimmy looked away quickly and checked his phone. “I’m due in the office soon,” he said. “Wifi password’s on the ‘fridge, feel free to eat whatever’s in there. Spare keys are on the bowl of coins near the door.”

Scott stared at Jimmy, surprised. He’d kinda thought this was a once-off charitable gesture. “Why are you being so nice to me? You don’t even know me. Hell, the last time we met before all this, you were trying to arrest me.”

It was Jimmy’s turn to stare. “Why not?” 

An ugly knot curled in Scott’s stomach. “This is going above and beyond your job, isn’t it?” 

He’d expected Jimmy to change the subject or refuse to answer. Instead, Jimmy set down his fork and looked Scott in the eye. “I know what it’s like to wake up alone when you don’t want to,” he said carefully. Scott clenched his hands tightly over his knife and fork and swallowed at the stab of grief. He ate in silence and helped Jimmy stack dirty plates in the dishwasher. Then he sat in the armchair and tried not to curl up as Jimmy got changed for work. 

“Did Rogers give you a phone?” Jimmy asked as he fiddled with cufflinks. At Scott’s slow nod, Jimmy said, “I’ll add my number to it. Call if you need something.” 

Scott handed over the phone. “Thanks,” he said softly. 

“Don’t mention it,” Jimmy keyed in a number and handed it back.

“What should I do?” Scott asked. At Jimmy’s startled look, Scott said, “The other Avengers are kinda trucking along on some project. They think Tony Stark’s still alive, somewhere. They’re trying to find him? I don’t even see how that’s going to make any difference. No offense to Cap.” 

“I’m not privy to their plans. Take a day off. The week off, even. Catch up with whoever’s left. Don’t feel like you’re being selfish. Or that you’re being lazy.” Jimmy finished fixing his cuffs. “Get back in the fight when you’re in the right headspace. It’s a war out there. But there’s no shame in taking a bit of time to process. Don’t regret having to.” 

Somehow Scott felt a little better. Processing. He could do that. He grinned at Jimmy, trying to lighten the mood. “You’re making me regret something right now.”

“Like what?” 

“Not getting dinner with you. Way back. When you asked?” Scott watched Jimmy’s expression change from puzzlement to dawning realisation to embarrassment. Oh, right. Well done, Scott. Reminding someone of something that they’d had to fall on their sword for. “Hey, I know you were just being polite. Or joking.” 

Jimmy gave him an odd look. “I’ll be back late,” he said, frowned to himself, and left hurriedly.

Scott curled in the armchair and stared at the ceiling. Stayed that way until his bladder started to hurt, then he relieved himself and tried to call Luis. No answer—the phone rang out. Same with the other guys. Jimmy called Cassie, knowing that was going to hurt. He listened to her cheerful prerecorded voice asking him to leave a message and closed his eyes. He was a failure. Being part of the Avengers had been an unlikely blip in his life, one that everyone else was clearly regretting getting him into. 

Besides, the Avengers facility was in New York. Six hour flight just to hang around and get underfoot? Scott couldn’t justify that. Hell, he wasn’t sure if he could justify the first flight he’d taken out there and back, even if it had been on the Avengers’ dime. He wasn’t a Norse God, or a certified genius like Dr. Banner, or Captain-goddamned-America. He was just an ex-felon who’d lucked into experimental technology. 

Scott tried turning on the TV, flicking through the channels. It soon got too ugly to watch. Military coups in faraway places, a new swathe of failed states, civil wars, a desperately shot documentary about how Thanos had effectively accelerated something called a ‘cascade’ by randomly erasing half of every living thing everywhere. Mass extinction imminent. Scott shut it off and curled back into a ball. 

“Scott? Hey. Scott.” Scott blinked awake, flinching violently. Whoever it was shaking his shoulder backed off. It was Jimmy, carrying a paper bag of stuff and looking concerned.

Scott checked the time on his new phone blearily. Shit. 9:15pm? He looked out of the large glass windows. It was dark. He’d slept all day? “Uh, hey,” Scott mumbled, forcing a smile. “Home already?” Shit. Of course Jimmy was home. It was late, even.

“Interested in dinner?” Jimmy asked, as though coming home to near-strangers who clearly hadn’t moved all day was completely normal. 

“Only if you let me help.” Scott could do that. Jimmy had bought canned stuff—meat, veg, pasta sauce. They made a messy sort of spaghetti that Jimmy looked apologetic for, but Scott was hungry enough to enjoy anything. “Could I ask what might be a really obvious question?” Scott said. 

“Go ahead.” 

“Why are there food shortages? Um. Thor said that as far as he knew, Thanos’ goal was to. Get rid of half of every living thing in the world? Randomly? Things seem to have gone to hell real fast.” 

“Two reasons,” Jimmy said as he ate. “Firstly, overpopulation isn’t the reason behind an over-consumption of resources: that’s the wealthy blaming the poor. So Thanos’ ‘solution’ was in itself based on a flawed assumption. Secondly, take milk for example. Perhaps a farmer lost most of his herd, or the herd lost most of the farmers, or they lost their pastures, or the transport company collapsed from the loss of its board—”

“Okay. I see.” 

“Global economy tanked. To put it lightly. And that’s not even the biggest problem in the world.”

“The cascade,” Scott said, recalling TV. 

Jimmy nodded grimly. “It appears so far that some species lost more than half of their number, some less. The ‘Snap’ was random, and because it was random it’s had a catastrophic impact on biodiversity. And with roughly half of the plants in the world gone… climate change has accelerated. Extreme weather events are going to get worse…” He trailed off, with a fake smile. “I hope I answered your question?”

“Uh. Yeah. You know. I totally didn’t expect this. I mean. When I was sub-atomic, I didn’t see any of the tardigrades or the other sub-atomic life forms disappear. I just knew something had gone wrong because the radio cut out.” 

Jimmy started to frown. “Maybe you were in a patch that wasn’t affected.” 

“I guess,” Scott said doubtfully. Nothing he’d seen had disintegrated. “That’s a hell of a coincidence.” 

“What are you trying to say?”

“Nothing. I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I don’t even. I still think if I pinch myself hard enough I’d wake up, y’know? I can’t even move my brain past that point.” Scott poked his unfinished pasta, his appetite fading fast. “I don’t even know what happened to my friends. My company.” 

Jimmy stared at him uncomfortably. “I can find out if you’d like. There’s a log of survivors. It’s incomplete, but it’s something.”

“Oh. Sure. Thanks.” Scott started to flush. Of _course_ he should’ve just asked the FBI agent. 

“You should qualify for a stipend from the Avengers Initiative as well. I’ll look into that. That should give you the resources to get the utilities at your place back up and running. In the meantime, we can drive to your house after this and pick up what you need. Clothes and things. If you like,” Jimmy said, hesitant. 

“Thanks,” Scott said, and when that sounded painfully inadequate, tried, “I owe you one.” 

“It’s nothing.”

“No it’s not. This is the most generous thing that anyone’s ever done for me,” Scott said, as earnestly as he could. “Let me help out somehow. In return.”

“You don’t need to do anything for me in return,” Jimmy said, after an awkward pause.

“Okay, wrong words. I mean, you look like you’re burning the candle from both ends. Because things are a mess? I want to help. Maybe I could keep an eye on the kids? I’m great with kids.” 

Jimmy looked like he was going to object, then he shook his head chuckled instead, which wasn’t much of a vote of confidence. “We’ll see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Refs:  
> https://www.polygon.com/2018/4/30/17290142/avengers-infinity-war-explained-ending-thanos  
> http://www.vulture.com/2018/07/yes-thanos-also-killed-half-of-all-animals-in-infinity-war.html  
> https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/d35nm7/an-economist-explains-why-thanos-is-wrong  
> https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/02/180219155019.htm


	3. Chapter 3

“Are you sure you’re going to be able to have lunch?” Muneeba peered so closely to the phone screen through Facetime that her face briefly filled the whole screen. 

“ _Mum_ ,” Kamala hissed. She’d backed off to the bathroom when she’d gotten the call. 

“Your father and I worry, you know. Palo Alto? You know what people say. Even the water costs money in Silicon Valley.” 

“The water in Deus’ office is free,” Kamala said, which turned out to be the wrong answer. 

Muneeba pursed her lips. She was Facetiming Kamala from the garden, her new sunflowers visible over her shoulder and her lime green hijab. “The water is free? What isn’t free then? The toilet?”

“What? No. _Mum_. This is Deus’ office. I’ve told you before.”

“Isn’t this boy your age? Wah, why does he have an office in Silicon Valley? Are his parents very rich? You said they were Korean. Samsung?” 

“No, no.” Kamala stifled a giggle. Amadeus was definitely not a secret Samsung billionaire. “He’s just very smart. He started his own company last year.” 

Muneeba was frowning again. “Another boy. How many boys are in this ‘Protector Initiative’? That nice man, Agent Woo, said it was mostly girls? That the boys were more like a ‘support unit’ than anything.” 

“Well he’s right, it’s mostly girls. And remember. This is my best chance at getting a full ride scholarship plus living expenses to anywhere I want,” Kamala said quickly, dangling the carrot again. 

Her mother sighed. “Yes, well, but, you know how your father and I worry—”

Cindy poked her head into the bathroom. “Everything okay in there? Oh. Hi Mrs Khan!” She had her mask pulled down, and she beamed. 

Muneeba relaxed at the visual proof that there was Another Girl Around. “Hello Cindy. Nice to see you again. Nothing, just checking in on my darling daughter.”

“ _Mum_ ," Kamala yelped. 

Cindy giggled. “Oh well, take your time! But the study group’s going to start so I’m just here to check if Kamala wants hot chocolate or tea.” 

“Oh, a study group!” Muneeba said. 

“Yup. Deus is like, a math prodigy, so we’re getting his help on math,” Cindy said, lying with an absolutely straight face. 

“Why didn’t you say so, Kamala?” Muneeba said, with a relieved smile. “I won’t hold you up then. Bye dear. Don’t come home too late, OK?” 

“You are a lifesaver,” Kamala told Cindy as she followed her out of the bathroom. 

“Spider senses tingled briefly,” Cindy said, flashing her a grin. “Besides, if Yukio and you weren’t in the team, my mum sure as hell wouldn’t have let me join it either. She went full tiger mother on Jimmy in our living room. It would’ve been funnier to watch if I wasn’t so worried that Jimmy would back down.”

Jimmy was very good at wrangling Asian mums. It probably helped that he could speak a ridiculous number of languages _and_ could radiate calm competence like a battery. “Yeah,” Kamala said. 

_Her_ parents had pretty much caved quickly once Jimmy had mentioned the full scholarship and stipend. And the fact that the Protectors Initiative was meant to be some junior arm of the Avengers or something. Not that they’d been to the Avengers building more than once, and even then, none of the Avengers had really had time for them. 

Amadeus’ office was nicer anyway, even if it was smaller. He owned a building on High Street near an ice cream shop and the Apple store, a bright office space with an indoor garden and blocked out spaces for busy people working on whatever Amadeus’ company was. Something about a mathematical approach to securities. The cooler stuff was underground. Cindy and Kamala ducked around the main floor and to an innocuous patch of the wall. They pressed their palms to the wall—didn’t matter where—and a couple of doors opened further down, revealing the option of a lift or the stairs. They took the stairs. 

The basement lab tended to drastically change between weeks, sometimes days, depending on whatever Amadeus was working on. Today it had no walls, most of the floor space instead occupied by vats of strange bluish liquid housing odd little floating metal specks that formed and reformed patterns next to humming consoles. There was a workbench of some abandoned project and a large silver cube in the far corner. Amadeus had cleared a table and set up chairs, laptops, and bowls of chips and boba tea. Kamala blinked. Jimmy had arrived at some point when Kamala had been busy trying to talk Muneeba down, and he’d brought a stranger: a good-looking white guy of indeterminate age about Jimmy’s height, dressed down in a plain black shirt and jeans. 

Cindy had frozen briefly. She scowled and sat down at her laptop. Kamala sat at hers. Self-consciously, she removed her mask, since Cindy didn’t have hers on. Yukio squeezed her hand under the table and Ned glanced at her before looking back at the stranger. Amadeus Cho was leaning back in his chair, arms folded across his skinny chest and black shirt. Unlike the rest of them, Amadeus wasn’t a high school kid, even though he was their age—he’d was in his second year at Stanford. 

“You look pretty different from your FBI mug shot, Mister Lang,” Cindy said. Kamala flinched and stared closely at the stranger. Cindy was right. It _was_ the Ant Man. 

“ _Silk_ ,” Jimmy said, frowning at her. 

“Call me Scott,” Scott said, with a startled laugh, “and you’re absolutely right. The FBI didn’t really get me at my best angle. Nice to meet you guys.” 

Yukio looked worriedly at Jimmy but said nothing. Amadeus caught the glance though—he frowned. “Did you get demoted again?” he asked Jimmy. 

“No,” Jimmy said, with a blink. 

“Oh good. My mum weirdly trusts you because you guys have that Asian Parent thing going on, and I don’t want to rock the boat.” Amadeus eyed Jimmy thoughtfully. “Assistant babysitter?” 

“Not how I would put it,” Jimmy said severely, though his mouth flicked into a brief grin. “Scott is a member of the Avengers—I heard that, Silk—and Captain Rogers agrees that since Scott is also based in San Francisco, he might as well be included in the Protectors Initiative in a mentorship capacity.”

“Really,” Cindy said, with open skepticism. “Pretty sure we could kick his ass.” 

“If the lot of you ganged up on any of the Avengers—except maybe Thor—you’d probably ‘kick their ass’,” Jimmy pointed out, raising his eyebrows. “Superpowers aren’t a definitive measure of self-worth.” Amadeus pretended to snore. “ _Amadeus_ ,” Jimmy snapped. 

“Sensing… lecture imminent… losing… brain processing speed…” Amadeus pretended to clutch at his temple. 

“I’ll still be involved in a supervisory capacity,” Jimmy said, ignoring Amadeus’ theatrics, “but as recent events have shown I clearly don’t have the time or ability to keep up with all of you on a day-to-day basis.” He patted Scott on the shoulder. “And that’s where Scott comes in.” Jimmy’s phone buzzed him, and he paused to check it. “I have to go. Feel free to reach me on the phone whenever you need to.” He nodded at them all and hurried off.

Amadeus waited until Jimmy’s retreat was no longer audible, then he looked over at Scott. “We really don’t need a babysitter, dude.” 

“I agree,” Scott said, picking a spare chair and sitting down, “and I’m not here in that kind of capacity. We’re guessing you people have a plan, and the New York branch of the Avengers is six hours away, so I might as well be attached to whatever you guys are doing.” He smiled. 

Ned’s eyes were huge. “New York branch. So we’re. The San Francisco branch? Californian branch? Awesome. I'm so glad my fam decided to move here.” 

“We’re more like a sub-brand or something,” Amadeus said, though he looked slightly more cheered up. “You used to work with Hank Pym, right? What’s he like?” 

“Seriously grumpy,” Scott said wryly. “Can we do one of those round of introduction things? Yes, I know, ergh, so first day of school, but I didn’t get anyone’s super-secret FBI file to read or anything. I’ll start. I’m Scott. I’m guessing you’re the people who broke into my house and left spider webbing on the second floor.” 

“We’ve read _your_ file,” Cindy said, narrowing her eyes. “You’ve been in jail.”

“Silk,” Kamala said, horrified. 

“What! We did.” 

Scott didn’t even miss a beat. “Yep, and the thing that put me there was the worst life decision I’ve ever made. If I could take it back, I would. Lost my wife, nearly lost my kid…” He trailed off, blinking for a moment, then he forced a smile. “Been trying to make up for it since.” 

Ned gave Cindy a sidelong stare. “Well uh. I’m. Ned? I dunno. I used to be Spiderman’s sidekick, kind of.” 

Yukio pursed her lips. “You’re not a sidekick.” 

“Hey, I’m completely happy playing a support class. I mean, I main Mercy,” Ned said, with a shrug. “Heroes never die, right? Uh, what else. My parents moved to America from Manila when I was two. ‘Cos of my dad. I don’t have superpowers or anything.”

“Says the guy who hacked Tony Stark’s onboard security,” Amadeus muttered.

“I was using a backdoor vulnerability in the Stark OS that he’s since patched,” Ned said sheepishly. “Also it kinda got P—uh, Spiderman into a lot of trouble with Mister Stark.” 

“Well, I can see why you’re in the Protectors,” Scott said, with a quick grin.

Ned coughed. “Actually I’m not, I’m in Deus’ Overwatch team and he asked me to tag along and—”

“Moving along,” Cindy cut in hastily. “I’m Cindy. Parents from Korea. I was born here. Yes, radioactive spider bite, no, I don’t have cancer. Next.” 

“I’m Kamala,” Kamala said. Put on the spot, she could only squirm in embarrassment. “Er. I can. Stretch and stuff? And heal.” That sounded seriously weird coming out of her mouth, but Scott didn’t smile, didn’t crack a joke. “My parents and my big brother moved here from Karachi before I was born.” 

“I’m Yukio, nice to meet you,” Yukio said, with a perky smile. “I’m from Osaka. I study at Xavier’s School for the Gifted. I can create electrical currents.” 

“And you’re a tech genius,” Amadeus said.

“Says the math prodigy,” Yukio shot back, though she giggled. 

“I’m Amadeus. Parents from Korea. I was born here. No radioactive spider,” Amadeus said, and smirked as Cindy rolled her eyes. “Cindy thinks my superpower is having a huge ego.”

“Massive ego,” Cindy agreed. 

“Math prodigy?” Scott asked.

“Oh, here we go,” Cindy said, even as Yukio laughed and Amadeus said, “Funny you said that actually.” 

“Are you still the seventh smartest person in the world? ‘Cos I’m thinking, a lot of people weren’t in the running for that one. Like Ned and Yukio,” Cindy said. Amadeus stuck out his tongue at her. 

“They’re not related,” Kamala told Scott, before Scott jumped to the usual conclusion and pissed off Cindy forever. 

“Didn’t think they were,” Scott said. He laughed. “Well, you guys are awesome. Maybe we should switch with the Avengers. Take over their HQ.” 

“Meh, it’s in the middle of nowhere.” Amadeus wrinkled his nose.

“My parents would freak out if I had to move to New York,” Kamala said. She shuddered at the thought. 

“We could ask Thor to switch to our team,” Cindy said. As Yukio giggled, Cindy said, “What? He’s only the hottest Avenger. He could probably deadlift all of us.” 

“What is it with girls and muscles?” Amadeus said scornfully. 

Cindy smiled sweetly over the table. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s the King of a galactic empire.” 

“The muscles help,” Scott said thoughtfully. At Cindy’s startled look, Scott grinned archly. “What? Thor _is_ hot. Is that even debatable?”

“ _Fun as it would be_ to talk about the aesthetic qualities of the so-called God of Thunder,” Amadeus said sharply, “I called us all here today because.” Amadeus paused and glanced at Scott. He looked back at Cindy. “He’s so snitching to Jimmy,” Amadeus said. 

“What’s wrong with that? I like Jimmy,” Kamala said. For all of Jimmy’s pedantic youth pastor tendencies, it was obvious to Kamala that he fiercely cared about their well-being. Hell, it was obvious even to Cindy. It was why she never stayed angry with Jimmy for that long. 

“Whether or not I snitch depends on exactly what I’m meant to be snitching about,” Scott said, completely deadpan. “Besides, I’ve been to prison. That’s sort of a serious anti-snitching culture right there. That I might have internalised.”

“That’s true,” Ned said. At Cindy’s frown, Ned said, “What? I’ve watched like, all the episodes of Prison Break.”

“Okay well,” Amadeus said, “Yukio, Ned, and I kind of have an idea. About the ashes that appeared after the Snap. You know, the disintegration residue. We took a sample—“

“Deus!” Kamala yelped. 

“ _In a very respectful way and from a hamster, not a human_ ,” Ned said very quickly. 

“It was my hamster too, before anyone else starts on our case. Rest in bits, Hamtaro.” Amadeus crossed himself. 

“And it had no hamster DNA at all,” Yukio said, with a bright smile. She typed briskly on her laptop. A projection of molecular structures blinked up over the workbench. “None of it’s remotely organic in nature. Nor does it match any sort of structure native to Earth.” 

“Anyway, to summarise a long series of experiments,” Ned said, “that yes we haven’t told Jimmy about yet, because the last time we mentioned resonance theory he gave us this really, really long lecture about the dangers of sticking our nose into the fabric of reality.”

“I think he said finger,” Kamala said. Yukio nodded. 

“Whatever.” Cindy sniffed. 

“I like how his voice kinda reaches like, the Asian Dad pitch, because my brain just tunes it out automatically without me having to tell it to,” Amadeus said. He glanced worriedly at Scott, then relaxed when Scott stifled a laugh. 

“Resonance theory?” Scott asked. 

“Okay. Reality is like an onion. There’s a layer above this one, a layer below this one, and a lot of it can be made to resonate together. The effects of resonance create so-called ‘magical’ effects in this reality plane. Lets you do things like bend space and time. It’s like, grade-school-level science theory to the Asgardians apparently,” Amadeus said, clearly trying to be patient.

“We hacked the Avengers database and copied all the notes Thor was leaving for Dr. Banner,” Yukio said brightly. 

“I don’t think we needed to tell Scott that, Yukio,” Kamala said, with a nervous laugh. 

“Absolutely didn’t need to tell me that,” Scott said, pretending to make a winding down gesture by his head, “and now that you have, I’ve just forgotten it. There. So what’s so special about the residue?”

“It’s not from this dimensional layer. And it’s the same mass as whatever it was that was ‘disintegrated’ after the Snap. So the theory is,” Amadeus said, “given the Asgardian theoretical laws of equivalent exchange between the dimensions, it might be possible that the resonance didn’t exactly destroy everything as compared to shifting them fractally through space.” 

“Meaning,” Scott said, very slowly, “that everyone’s. Still alive?” He was gripping the edge of the table, his knuckles going white. 

“Well,” Ned hedged.

“It’s been months,” Yukio said apologetically, “and we don’t know what the other dimension might be like. Or if our theory is even true.” 

“Would Thor be able to confirm this one way or the other?” Scott asked hopefully. 

“Nope. Apparently, fractal study is still really theoretical even for the Asgardians. Thor made a note about that when Banner asked him about it.” Amadeus cracked his knuckles. “That’s where we come in. I _love_ theoretical anything. And the basis of Asgardian tech is pure mathematics. Their fractal theory is pretty much a radical expansion of the Banach-Tarski paradox.” 

Scott rubbed his temple slowly. “Any chance of explaining that in smaller words for my tiny brain?” 

“An Infinity Stone is like a compressed resonance battery. By using all of them together Thanos generated enough energy to tear open the onion of reality and shove half of everything sideways,” Amadeus said, with exaggerated patience. 

“Really not what happened,” Ned muttered. 

“Close enough,” Yukio said.

“We can’t exactly search the universe for Thanos again and try to get the glove back,” Scott said. He grimaced. “Hell, the Avengers are still looking for Tony Stark, even.”

“We don’t need to. The onion of reality is now porous. We don’t need all the stones. We need maybe one. Most of one, even. Effectively.” Amadeus typed on his laptop, frowning at the screen. “By my calculations, there’s still a lot of residual resonance energy lingering everywhere. Even now. It’s highly concentrated at a point in Wakanda. But it’s slowly fading. The more it fades, the more energy we’re going to need.” 

“I don’t know where we can find another Infinity Stone,” Scott said doubtfully. “According to the briefing I got in HQ, there were only six?” 

“We’re going to make one?” Kamala asked. 

“Nope. Don’t know if that’s possible. I mean, it’s probably possible, but without having a Stone to study firsthand I wouldn’t know where to start,” Amadeus admitted. “Fiddling with that piece of Pym tech that Yukio had gave me an idea though. The Pym particle works to shrink or enlarge mass through a phenomenon that’s pretty close to resonance theory.”

“Ghost,” Scott said sharply. 

“What?” Cindy flinched. “Where?”

“I mean. There was a lady I met. Codenamed Ghost. She had an accident with an unstable version of the Pym particle. It made her sort of… Non-solid. She could walk through things. And yeah, she looked like a ghost.” Scott hesitated. “I don’t know if she survived the Snap. But Janet van Dyne—she spent years sub-atomic—somehow gained the ability to stabilise her. And I was stuck sub-atomic because I was trying to gather energy to help keep her stable.” 

“ _What_ sort of energy?” Amadeus demanded. 

“Quantum? Hank used to just attach that word to everything though. Uh, and I left the jar in there, what with nearly getting eaten by a tardigrade and all.” 

Amadeus glanced at Ned, who was scanning something on his laptop. “Yeah. Quantum energy, according to the notes we got off Hank Pym’s computers,” Ned said. 

“Wait.” Amadeus narrowed his eyes. “When you went ‘sub-atomic’. You entered the _quantum realm_?” 

“… I think so? Hank never really explained it in depth. I just called it going ‘sub-atomic’,” Scott said.

Yukio nearly started out of her seat. “You were there during the Snap, weren’t you? When you were there. Did you see things disintegrate? Disappear?” 

Scott narrowed his eyes. “No.” 

“That’s it!” Amadeus whooped. 

“What?” Kamala asked, excited. 

“Looking at Dr Pym’s notes I thought it was possible that he was using the Pym Particle not just to shrink down to a ‘sub-atomic’ level but to move between dimensions and back. Thor’s notes also mentioned the ‘quantum realm’ as one of the known adjacent dimensions to the Asgardians.” Amadeus brought up a diagram next to Yukio’s, showing a spiraling set of spheres. One was marked ‘Prime Material’, others were marked ‘Quantum Realm’, ‘Darkforce Realm’, ‘Astral’, and more. 

“If we find which realm the others got moved into, we could bring them back?” Cindy guessed. “Surely there’s like. Millions of realms. Or more. Also, maybe Thanos only meant for the Snap to affect this dimension.” 

“Not according to Asgardian notes. The Snap should've affected everything,” Amadeus said.

“But the tardigrades and stuff didn’t disappear,” Ned said, with a glance at Scott, who nodded. 

“Which means that maybe something in the quantum realm—or quantum energy itself—has a canceling or destabilising effect on the resonance energy generated from the Infinity Stones,” Yukio concluded, “and if we gather enough of it maybe we can test it against a pocket of residual resonance to see what happens. Using the Asgardian expansion of the theory of paradoxical decomposition.” 

Amadeus rubbed his hands together gleefully. Kamala started to laugh. “You might as well say it. I know you want to,” she said. They’d only just watched The Martian as a group a couple of weeks back, after all.

“We’re gonna math the _hell_ out of this,” Amadeus said, and grinned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge disclaimer: I’ve actually already forgotten most of my high school math. I don't know any actual pure math, so. An apology in advance to any readers who actually study pure math hahaha.


	4. Chapter 4

Trying to keep up with a group of superpowered/genius kids would’ve been a full-time job for an entire FBI team, and after a couple of weeks of trying it Scott’s respect for Jimmy’s work ethic was unshakeable. No matter what Jimmy was up to, he checked in on each of the kids every couple of days by text. There was a group catch-up at least once a week, usually at Ziggy’s Burgers, which had halal stuff for Kamala and vegetarian options for Yukio. Scott getting involved didn’t seem to noticeably ease Jimmy’s hours—9-ish was usually the kindest time Jimmy was home every day.

“If I can help you with anything else you really should let me know,” Scott said, as he ladled soup into bowls.

“You didn’t have to wait up,” Jimmy said. He was fighting yawns, and it was close to midnight. 

“Eh, I was up anyway. And forgot to eat,” Scott lied. It never felt good stealing stuff off Jimmy’s pantry, especially after Scott had gone into a supermarket to get snacks and had seen the empty shelves. The prices on what actually was still in stock had made him rub his eyes in disbelief. 

Jimmy gave him one of his unreadable looks as Scott sat down. “Has the stipend come in? From the Avengers. I filed the paperwork.” 

“Oh, that. Uh. Yeah. Think so.” Reality started to weigh down. Scott flushed. “Uh. Sorry I’ve been mooching off you all this while. I’ll get around to having the utilities reconnected, it kinda slipped my mind. I’m not going to give excuses. My bad.” 

“You don’t need to feel bad about it. You can stay as long as you want,” Jimmy said, very seriously. His eyes flicked up at Scott’s face, then back down to his phone. Jimmy had been reading the news. 

“I could pay rent,” Scott said. He smiled playfully, but he wasn’t really joking. 

“What for? You’re a welcome guest.” This time Jimmy didn’t even look up. Doubt curled uneasily into Scott’s gut, making his smile fade. 

“Isn’t it kinda going above and beyond your job? If you hadn’t dug me out of that bar I probably would’ve ended up like Paxton.” Hell, without Jimmy allowing Scott to be part of the Protectors Initiative, he probably wouldn’t have unstuck himself from Jimmy’s couch. 

“Glad I could help. Also, the kids like you. That’s good.” 

“Most of them,” Scott said. He tried another playful smile. “Any hints for getting Cindy and Deus to like me?”

“I’ll let you know when I figure that out for myself.” Jimmy was now checking his mail. Scott bit down on a sigh. Jimmy _had_ been getting a little less friendly recently. Scott had thought it was because he was tired, but now it was pretty goddamned obvious why. Scott was overstaying his welcome and he hadn’t even noticed. 

“Are you kidding? They love you. They’re always talking about you when you’re not there. Hell, I think they’d rather you were there instead of me. Even though they bitch all the time about your lectures. I’m surprised you don’t have kids.” 

This got Scott a sharp glance. “Why do you say that?” 

Oops. Had Scott just put his foot in it again? “Well,” Scott said, with an ingratiating smile, “you’re great with kids, you’re a really nice guy, you’ve got a good job…?” 

Jimmy was back to checking his phone, making a dismissive gesture with his spoon. “Never met the right person.” 

“What kinda right person?” Scott asked, ready with a joke to laugh it off if Jimmy got defensive or irritated. 

Jimmy sniffed. “You sound like the priest at my church.” He smiled to himself, though. Maybe that was a good sign. 

“Nice to see that I can share _some_ common traits with a priest.” Scott pretended to clasp his hands before him in prayer. Jimmy let out a startled laugh, shaking his head. 

“You’d be surprised. Hm. The right person? Someone funny and kind. They don’t have to be perfect, they just need to be self-aware. They’d do the right thing even if it’s hard. They believe in something, even if it means risking everything.” Jimmy was squirming a little, but since his eyes were glued to his phone, Scott guessed it was probably a bad work email. 

Jimmy had said _they_ , though. Did he mean…? Oh hell, it wasn’t like Scott had a chance. Besides, it was just going to make things awkward if he ever said anything. And he didn’t want to be booted off the Protectors. “I know someone like that,” Scott said, just to fill the silence.

This made Jimmy tense and glance up again. “Yeah?”

“Hope van Dyne. I know, you guys think she’s a fugitive or something, but she’s really all of those things.” 

Jimmy looked back down at his phone with a short laugh. “I’m sure.” 

“She really is,” Scott said, a little stung on Hope’s behalf. 

“Aren’t the two of you…?” 

“What? No. Well. Not anymore. I mean, even before the Snap. We figured it wasn’t going to work out. Still partners in literal crime. Uh. Wish I didn’t just say that to an FBI agent.” 

“It didn’t work out?” Jimmy glanced up again.

“Well, she’s this gorgeous, really smart, super capable, highly driven woman, big time CEO—at least until I fucked that up—lots of life goals, while I’m kinda like this random ex-felon schmuck whose house apparently smells like old socks,” Scott pointed out. 

“It does smell,” Jimmy said, with a faint grin, “but you’re not that bad. Maybe she’ll come around.” 

“Real life isn’t Hollywood. The brilliant, beautiful lady doesn’t have to end up with the one deadbeat dude in her life. I could introduce you guys though? After. Things get fixed. By uh, the Avengers.” 

Jimmy gave Scott another long, unreadable look, even as Scott mentally kicked himself. Fuck. He’d nearly just snitched on the kids. “I admire your confidence,” Jimmy said. 

Did he suspect…? “Cap, Bruce, and Thor seemed pretty confident the last time I talked to them.” 

“No doubt.” 

“Aren’t you? Confident?”

“Not at all,” Jimmy said grimly. “I don’t think there’s a magical cure-all for what’s happened. And even if there was, Thanos is still out there. With the glove.”

That’s right. Thanos hadn’t factored into the kids’ plans. Shit. “Thor has some sort of really big axe thing now, apparently it works on Thanos or something.” Thor had been completely matter-of-fact about his personal failures, so much that Scott couldn’t even be angry. If an actual God could fuck up now and then, somehow it made Scott’s own many personal fuck-ups easier to bear. 

Maybe he could get Thor to stand by. Wherever Thor was. 

“I’ve read the report.” Jimmy was dismissive again, but Scott was too busy worrying about Thanos to really feel hurt about it this time. He did get guilty again when it was time to stack the dishes in the dishwasher. Especially when Jimmy kept yawning and rubbing his eyes. 

“I’ll get the utilities reconnected tomorrow,” Scott promised, “then I’ll be out of your hair.” 

“Scott…” Jimmy trailed off. He looked a little frustrated. He shook his head again. “I’m really not trying to kick you out. I… I actually do like you being here. The company. I mean, I enjoy your company.” 

“Nice of you to say so,” Scott said. He knew better. The first week, even with the kids under his wing, Scott had tended towards depression and self-pity. He was terrible company. Jimmy was just being kind again. 

“It’s true.” 

“Sure thing,” Scott said, playing along, “up until your place starts smelling of socks too, eh?”

Jimmy exhaled. He looked a little defeated for some reason. “Nevermind. Good night, Scott.”

#

“Scott seem kinda down to you today?” Kamala whispered to Cindy. They were doing Actual School Homework on the workbench, because school somehow managed to still be a thing even after a global catastrophe, even if the school week had shrunk down to 3 days. The Protectors didn’t meet everyday—even if Kamala, Cindy, and Yukio kept in touch daily on Whatsapp—usually, when there was a group meetup, Scott would be really peppy. Today he was subdued.

Cindy barely glanced up from her books. Scott was wedged under the strange tubular machine that now took up most of Amadeus’ lab. A lot of the equipment and parts had been scavenged out of Pym’s personal lab, and it was already sucking up so much power that Amadeus had taken it all off-grid so as not to trip up any FBI wires. Thankfully Pym’s reactor was still functional. Though Kamala was dreading what Jimmy would say if he ever saw Amadeus’ lab. 

“He did lose his daughter,” Cindy said quietly. “Hasn’t had that much time to get used to it. Like everyone else, he’s going to have bad days.”

“Oh, right.” Kamala felt her cheeks grow hot. She kept forgetting. Most of the time, Scott was so cheerful and good-natured that it was easy for _Kamala_ to forget that the Snap had happened. Until she went back outside. 

Yukio and Amadeus were clustered at laptops hooked up to the machine, occasionally comparing code. Ned wasn’t here—his 3 day school week was Mon-Weds-Fri. “We could build this a lot more quickly with ants,” Scott said from under the machine. 

“Yech,” Cindy said. 

“They are really clean creatures, young lady,” Scott said. 

“The lab won’t be clean if you use them as assistants, because I will throw up everywhere,” Cindy promised. She hesitated. “What about squirrels? Maybe you could make giant squirrels? Get them to do your bidding like the ants?”

Scott laughed. The sound seemed a little forced. “Only works on ants, sorry.” 

Cindy deflated. “I like squirrels.” 

“I don’t like ants either,” Amadeus said. He pulled a face. “Blech. No ants in my lab. My mum still freaks out at the sight of ants at home. She has this huge can of bug spray just for them.”

“I think we need to have a group session discussing our ingrained prejudices,” Scott said, with mock sadness. “We’ll wait for Ned.” 

“Sure, if you bring Jimmy,” Cindy said. 

“Why? What about Jimmy?” Scott stopped what he was doing and peered out from under the machine. 

“Are you kidding me? That guy has a million hang-ups,” Cindy said. She looked at Kamala for support. 

“ _Language_ ,” Kamala said, imitating Jimmy’s brisk tone. 

Yukio giggled, then looked instantly guilty for giggling. “Maybe because he’s a youth pastor?” she said. 

“He once talked to me for like half an hour about the concept of the greater good,” Amadeus said, rolling his eyes. “I nearly died. I was like, dude, chill, I understand inequalities outside of Euclidean space.” 

“He has no chill,” Cindy agreed. “I told him he’d get wrinkles.”

“‘Young lady, aren’t you aware of Section 13A of the Sokovia Accords’?” Kamala quoted. Scott started to laugh. 

“He’s a nice guy deep down,” Yukio said, though she didn’t stop giggling. 

“Yeah, a nice guy who will probably die alone. Remember that time he brought us over to the FBI HQ to introduce us to some of his colleagues?” Amadeus said. 

“Agent Burleigh was nice. He gave us KitKats,” Kamala said wistfully. She was easily bribed with KitKat. 

“I overheard one of the other agents talking in another room about how they were surprised that he was any good with kids ‘cos they’d known him ever since he joined the FBI and he’s single and works all the time,” Cindy said. 

“It isn’t that nice to eavesdrop,” Scott said, though he sounded amused.

“I can’t help it. Enhanced hearing and all that. He goes on dates though, I’ve seen that. By _accident_ ,” Cindy added hastily, when Yukio shot her a reproachful look. “I wasn’t stalking him! I was doing my rounds and saw him in a bar. He was buying this cute guy a drink. Don’t think it went well though.” 

“Not well how?” Kamala asked, morbidly curious now. 

“You spied on Jimmy? When?” Amadeus asked, wide-eyed. “He didn’t notice? Wow. Way to go, Mr. ‘Be Aware Of Your Surroundings At All times’.”

“I left my Protectors communicator at home after Yukio finally remembered to mention that there were trackers in them,” Cindy said dryly. Yukio smiled and shrugged. “This was yesterday. They were flirting and then Jimmy got bored or something, he made an excuse and left. And he did not see me, before you say anything.” She paused, with a belated glance at Scott. “Uh, this is one of those things that you should maybe forget that you just heard.”

“Already done,” Scott said, though he was frowning a little. “Yesterday night?” 

“Yes? Why?” 

“Er… well, nights are when people like to relax and have a drink after work, so, uh, don’t think Jimmy would be happy if he ever found out that you saw him, so. Keep it to yourselves. Which bar was that? Maybe you should avoid that area from now on,” Scott said. There was something studiedly casual about his voice, and he wasn’t looking at Cindy. 

Cindy named a location on the outskirts of her usual patrol route and watched Scott curiously as he slid back under the machine. She exchanged a look with Yukio, who smiled and covered her mouth as she glanced at her phone. Amadeus had already lost interest in the conversation, turning back to his laptop.

 **Cindy** : wow  
**Cindy** : well now that I know what to look for I see it  
**Kamala** : wat  
**Cindy** : think scott has major thing for someone  
**Kamala** : ?? who  
**Cindy** : JIMMY OBV  
**Kamala** : WAT  
**Yukio** : guess it makes sense  
**Yukio** : scott was living with jimmy  
**Cindy** : wat??  
**Kamala** : wat? rn??  
**Yukio** : not sure about now  
**Yukio** : he was wearing one of jimmy’s shirts 4 days ago  
**Yukio** : the watchmen one with the slight rip on the collar  
**Kamala** : :O  
**Kamala** : how’d u know that was jimmy’s  
**Yukio** : b/c I saw jimmy wear it for bbq day weeks ago  
**Cindy** : they’re DATING!?  
**Yukio** : don’t think so  
**Kamala** : well that’s going to be hard to suss out

“Scott,” Cindy said.

“Hm?” Scott asked from under the machine. 

“Are you and Jimmy dating?” Cindy asked, and grinned at Kamala’s look of horror. There was a yelp of shock under the machine and a _thunk_. 

“No! No. Why do you ask?” 

“Just wondering,” Cindy said sweetly, and smirked at Amadeus’ frown until Amadeus rolled his eyes and started typing again.

 **Kamala** : omg =_= gurl  
**Yukio** : (￣ー￣；  
**Cindy** : well now we know

“Are you living back in your house with the giant ant?” Kamala asked. 

“Yes, and there is really nothing wrong with ants, guys.” There was a clank under the machine as Scott fit another part back in place. “Did that work, Deus?” 

“Calibrating,” Amadeus said, frowning in concentration. 

**Kamala** : so something happened then, welp  
**Yukio** : aww  
**Yukio** : they’d have been cute together  
**Cindy** : pls don’t ship mediocre ppl with competent ppl  
**Kamala** : feeling called out q_q  
**Cindy** : NOT IRL  
**Cindy** : it’ll only b depressing for everyone  
**Kamala** : ha ha  
**Yukio** : you’re writing friend fiction rn aren’t u  
**Kamala** : no!!!1!  
**Yukio** : (^▽^;)  
**Cindy** : it’s prob 1-sided  
**Cindy** : y would jimmy even like scott  
**Cindy** : scott is a disaster  
**Yukio** : (T⌓T) mean 

Another clanking sound under the machine, then there was a low, deep purr as it came to life. Scott pushed himself out into view, grinning in triumph. “That sounds about right.” 

Kamala looked at the machine again. With it lit up, it now did look a little like the strange machine that they’d found in the back of the van on the roof where they’d rescued Scott from the quantum realm. Just slimmer and sleeker. “So now what?” she asked. 

“We… shrink down and go in there? Do we need ugly costumes too?” Cindy asked. 

“I can rework those costumes to make them look nicer,” Yukio said, looking at her laptop. “The costume for ‘The Wasp’ is already on file in the Pym database anyway, and we’ve got the 3D printer that he used. I could change it up. Take off the boob armour. And add pockets. I’ll take everyone’s measurements after this.” 

“I don’t want to know why there was boob armour on a costume that some old dude presumably made for his daughter,” Amadeus muttered. 

Scott made a face. “I never thought about it that way before and now my brain hurts. How are the canisters coming along?”

“It was a bit tricky getting ones made with the particular sort of glass that Dr Pym was using, but they’d be delivered later today or tomorrow. Then we can do our test.” Amadeus shut the machine down and grinned. “Which is good, because we’d be ready by Saturday and Ned will want to be here. Everyone else free on Saturday?” 

“Think so,” Kamala said, though her parents hated it when Protector stuff ran over her weekend rather than just the school week. “But Cindy might have to help me cover with the parentals.” 

“Sure thing. We can cover for each other,” Cindy said, making a note on her phone.

“I could help talk to your parents,” Scott said. 

Kamala laughed. Then she swallowed it with a cough. “Um, no thanks. Sorry I laughed. But really. It won’t help.” 

“It was hard enough for them to trust Jimmy, if they realize he’s not here with us and you are… No offense,” Cindy said. 

“It’s not you,” Amadeus said, a little kindly. “My mum probably wouldn’t trust like, Tony Stark, even. Maybe not anyone but Captain America. And even then she’d probably freak out and think this was really some kind of secret military thing.” 

“Okay, I hear you guys. No talking to parents,” Scott said, chuckling.

“And no talking to Jimmy,” Yukio said. She pursed her lips. “He’s usually busy on Saturday, but you’d never know. Or do you guys want to do it on Sunday when Jimmy definitely has church stuff? I’m good for either day.”

“Same,” Scott said. 

“Can’t do Sunday,” Cindy said apologetically. “Have an extended family thing.” 

“And I’ve got Sunday school and stuff at the mosque,” Kamala said. 

“Let’s do Saturday. Ned just said that he’s up for it.” Amadeus checked his phone. “Also, it’ll be just a test run, so just FYI, if we accidentally pull a giant tardigrade into my lab and wreck it, I’m gonna be pissed.”


	5. Chapter 5

Scott hadn’t actually wanted to bring kids to the Quantum Realm, given how dangerous it was. He’d tried to talk the girls out of it, but in the end, Cindy had said flat out that they were either going with him or they would go alone after webbing Scott to the wall of the lab. He tried not to sulk as they popped out into the now-familiar surreal space of the Quantum Realm, with its twisted textures and its strange denizens. 

“Testing one, two, three,” Cindy said. Cindy and Yukio were wearing near-identical versions of the Wasp costume, albeit with no metal wedge between the boobs and inbuilt pockets on the flanks. Cindy’s costume had white traceries down the breastplate and special bracers, while Yukio’s had pink bars up her wrists. Kamala had a costume too, but it had malfunctioned when she had tried to stretch, so she was sitting things out. 

“Loud and clear. Visual feed works too,” Amadeus said through the radio, his voice hushed with awe. “Wow. This is. Fucking amazing.” 

“Language,” Kamala said, and giggled. 

“ _Wooow_ ,” Ned agreed. “Look at that. Loricifera? That’s kinda weird. I was wondering that about the tardigrades too. Loricifera and tardigrades are like, water-dwelling creatures. You guys aren’t in any kinda marine environment.” 

“These are Quantum Realm creatures,” Yukio said, looking up as a multi-tendriled thing floated by. “Not your usual micro-animals. It’s really interesting that they appear so visually similar. But they’ve clearly adapted to the Quantum Realm.” She waved her hand through the air. “Why does gravity work for us but not for them? Or do they have some other kind of propulsion?” 

“This is like one of those bad comic book things which have handwave shit and species that make no actual sense but are just there to be cool,” Amadeus said. He sounded tense with excitement though.

“You can’t be criticising a whole ‘nother dimension for not having the same rules as our dimension,” Scott said, stifling a laugh as he unlocked the first canister. “Where’s your sense of adventure, Deus?”

“I like math,” Amadeus complained. “Math has these things called proofs.” 

“Goldbach conjecture,” Yukio said. She giggled as Amadeus made a choking noise. 

“The what now?” Scott asked. 

“Ugh, don’t get them started on math. My brain starts to flatline,” Cindy said. 

“It’s one of the oldest and best-known unsolved problems in number theory,” Yukio explained.

“Deus told me he once woke up from a dream where he solved it, only to realise it was a dream. I think there were maybe tears,” Ned said. There was a horrified yelp and a crashing noise. 

“Break it up, guys. Seriously,” Kamala said, though she was clearly biting down laughter. 

“Is nothing sacred?” Amadeus growled, sulky now. “That was a fucking secret. Dick.” 

“Language,” Scott said, though he smiled to himself. Each time he’d come to the Quantum Realm either he’d been desperate or something had quickly gone wrong. This… this actually felt fun. 

“We can actually travel for a bit right? We won’t get lost or stuck in here?” Cindy asked. 

“Well, I mean, everything’s really experimental and conjectured from Dr Pym’s notes,” Amadeus muttered, “but yes, Ned and I fixed some of his glitchy code and Yukio modded the suits so, _probably_ you can explore and come back in one piece.” 

“What I still don’t get is. Ok so. Going really, really small. Moves you sideways through the onion of reality?” Kamala asked slowly. “Just being tiny lets you move into the Quantum Realm?”

Ned coughed. “Uhm, not really. Micro-animals that are native to ‘our’ world still exist. And were probably disintegrated during the Snap. What actually happened was. The Pym particle creates a resonance effect when it changes size along with mass and density. When you go big, it doesn’t make a difference. But when you’re really small, it’s enough to push you, um, inter-dimensional, yeah.” 

“Then why is it when they embiggen in the Quantum Realm it pushes them back here? Or it doesn’t? I didn’t get that part. Why Scott was stuck until you and Yukio did whatever to the computers,” Kamala said, after a thoughtful pause. “Also you mentioned that Dr Pym had to go sub-atomic in a shuttle? Why’s that?” 

“Could we not have had this discussion over breakfast?” Cindy asked in a strained voice, one foot frozen in the air. 

“Laws of physics clearly work differently in different dimensions, which, by the way, is in itself both amazing and really annoying,” Amadeus said, ignoring Cindy, “so in short, the Pym particle doesn’t work the same way as it does over there as it does here, and needs an extra boost from this end to pull a person back. Kinda like following a wireless safety tether.” 

“Not really what happens,” Ned muttered.

“Close enough.” Yukio was inspecting a twisting, multi-faceted pillar that shuddered in a wind that Scott couldn’t feel. Weird textured spheres floated in the pink-purple twilight of the dimension. Something vast, long, and twisting was floating lazily in the distance, lights and blots pulsing up and down its great flank. 

“Hey,” Cindy said, very quietly, “what the hell is that?”

Scott turned. Small flickering yellow lights about the size of Scott’s fist were floating closer over the gray spongy ground that they stood on. “Kinda pretty,” Yukio said. 

“I don’t like how it’s getting closer.” Kamala sounded a little nervous. “Scott?” 

“Yeah, maybe we should back off a little.” Scott glanced at the canister. It was filling up sluggishly. Maybe the spot they were in wasn’t great for extracting pure quantum energy. Yukio drew her whip from her belt as they backed away, watching the bobbing line of lights. 

“This isn’t like any micro-animal I’m aware of and I read up lots about it since the tardigrade incident,” Ned said. Scott could vaguely hear furious typing. “Maybe it’s an environmental effect?” 

Yukio walked to the side. A few of the lights broke off from the line, as though tracking her movement. “Okay. I don’t think it’s pretty anymore,” Yukio said. 

“Extraction at twenty per cent,” Scott said. He tried shaking the canister a little. 

“Yeah, like shaking it works to make it go faster. Um. Maybe we should just abort the mission for now. We could move somewhere else without creepy lights,” Amadeus said. 

“Beam us up, Scotty,” Cindy said, with a wink at Scott that made him laugh—then she screamed as something grabbed her from behind and yanked her up into the air. 

“Cindy!” Kamala cried.

Scott whirled around. Cindy was struggling against nothing in the air, shoving against something. Yukio struck, her whip throwing off strange purplish sparks. There was a skull-rattling reverberation, sound pitched at a painful level that Scott couldn’t register. Something flickered into view in fits and starts, bulbous and gigantic, taller than houses. Two filaments fed out from the top of its head and ended in a couple of the yellow lights. Its mouth was a mass of translucent tentacles that were trying to push Cindy into an open maw. 

“Ah fuck.” Scott didn’t have any weapon, didn’t have powers. Couldn’t reach Cindy. He rushed the lights instead, stomping on one of them. The creature flinched sideways with another painful soundless reverberation, crashing into something that also flickered into view. 

“How many are there!” Ned yelped. 

“Shit, shit—Deus, we have to get them out of there,” Kamala said urgently.

“Trying! Trying! Something’s interfering—electrical static—”

“You guys have to get clear,” Ned said, his voice breaking briefly into a dull crackling. 

Scott tamped down on the wave of panic and stomped on the light again, grabbing the filament as he did so. The monster spat Cindy out with a cry so painful that Scott nearly dropped the canister. Cindy swung free, twisting in mid air to shoot webbing at its mouth and tentacles, gumming them together. She spun out of reach of another monster that made a grab for her, spinning gracefully against filaments to web the creatures together. Yukio was backing towards Scott. She cracked her whip against a set of lights, wincing as another monster sparked into view with a cry. It whirled around and retreated, flailing. 

“We’ve got to get clear. Cindy! Move!” Scott called, backing off. Yukio lashed another set of lights as it probed closer. Another monster fled as Cindy launched herself into the air, landing lightly, then falling to her knees, holding her arm with a pained yelp. Scott didn’t hesitate. Somehow he found the strength to scoop Cindy up over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry, and started in a dead run away from the lights. Yukio kept pace, lashing out at lights that got too close. 

The air felt like it was burning in his lungs. Yet all Scott could hear was Cindy trying to bite down on her cries of pain each time she was jarred against his shoulder. He shouldn’t have taken the kids sub-atomic. Should’ve told Jimmy—

—and the world was stretching, going hyper-real, lights streaking past in red and gold—

—Scott nearly crashed face-first into the wall. Kamala had grabbed him an inch before he could. She lifted Cindy from his shoulders with stretched fingers and set her gently on the floor. Scott turned—Yukio—but there Yukio was, staggering for a moment before righting herself and pulling off her helmet. 

“Cindy!” Amadeus was hurrying over with a first-aid kit, a basin, and a hose. The tentacles had eroded away part of Cindy’s suit, the edges still hissing and spitting. Kamala and Yukio hastily peeled the rest of the suit off her to the shirt and jeans she had underneath. Ned cut off the damaged shirt sleeve with scissors and backed off as Amadeus started washing the area with the hose. The exposed skin was a bright mottled red. It was hurting her—Cindy flinched each time a fresh wash of water went over her skin, and she was clenching her teeth. 

“Ambulance?” Kamala asked uncertainly, phone in hand. 

“You kidding? My mum will murder me. I’m fine,” Cindy said, her teeth gritted. “God, it hurts. Like a ton of needles.” 

“Analysing the… uh, whatever it was on your clothes,” Ned said further away. “But I think we probably should find a doctor or something. Umm.” 

“No. No doctor. Doctors treat me like I’m a freak,” Cindy said grimly. She flinched again. The reddening was getting worse.

“We can’t just fix whatever happened with a first aid kit. And your suit was breached down there,” Scott said flatly. “Jimmy’s on his way. If we can keep Cindy hydrated until then—”

“You fucking told _Jimmy_?” Cindy said, incredulous.

“Just did,” Scott said, and braced himself. 

“What the hell, man.” Amadeus frowned at him. “We trusted you.”

“Guys,” Ned said placatingly, “calm down.” 

“I knew he was going to snitch.” Cindy glared at Scott. “The hell is wrong with you?” 

“You’re _hurt_ ,” Scott shot back. “By god knows what was in there. _And_ your suit was breached in the Quantum Realm. You’re going to need specialised help.” 

“You don’t understand. My mum’s going to pull me from the program if I go to the hospital!” Cindy yelled. She was so angry that her eyes were bright with tears. “I’ll be grounded for years. Then I’ll never have the chance to help get my dad back. I hate you!” 

“Cindy,” Kamala said gently. Yukio pushed a bottle of water into Cindy’s hands, and hugged her, whispering and petting her hair until Cindy sniffled and drank. 

Scott looked at Amadeus, who scowled and kept washing the burn mark. “Just set that canister down over there,” Amadeus said, gesturing at the workbench. “Thanks for nothing.”

#

Scott answered the door in an old bathrobe draped over a rumpled shirt and shorts, his eyes dug against dark hollows. “Oh, hey,” he said, blinking. He stepped aside to let Jimmy in and closed the door. “Cindy okay?” 

“She’ll heal. Probably won’t scar,” Jimmy said. He glanced around. Scott had made a nominal attempt to clean up, but there was an unfinished bottle of beer on the table. Only one, at least. “Had her medevaced to a facility to run tests, but she was fine after a few hours. The incident that gave her powers also makes her very resilient.” 

Scott’s face crumpled in relief. “Thank God. Her mum take it OK?”

“Cindy begged me not to tell her.” 

“And?” 

“So I didn’t tell her. Since she appears to have recovered. Though I made her promise to call me for evac if she has any symptoms. And to take it easy and stay hydrated. Amadeus and Ned are analysing whatever it was that got on her clothes. Synthesising a serum, they said.” Jimmy exhaled and looked Scott evenly in the eye. “You should’ve told me what they were getting up to.” 

“The project’s very important to them—”

“It’s not the first time they’ve tried something or other to undo the Snap,” Jimmy cut in sharply. “And it’s not the first time one of them got hurt because of it. They’re _kids_. Hell, Cindy and Kamala shouldn’t even be doing solo patrols of their neighbourhoods at their age. They should be… they should be at school. Having fun. Being kids.”

“Well,” Scott said, a little wryly, “maybe someone, not naming names, gave them one too many lectures about responsibility.” 

The laugh bubbled out of Jimmy before he could stop it. “That’s not even funny.” 

“You laughed.” Scott glanced over at the couch. “Uh, you want a drink?” 

“Water.” 

“Nah, c’mon. Coffee? Beer?” 

“Coffee,” Jimmy said grudgingly, even though it was edging into the late evening. He sat on the couch as Scott shuffled into the kitchen and eventually emerged with a couple of cups of hot coffee. 

“To be honest,” Scott said, sitting down at a respectful distance, “they’d probably still be doing what they do even if you weren’t there. They’re good kids and this is really important to them.” 

Jimmy shook his head. “It scares me to think that they go out on patrol. I’ve seen so much that can go wrong. In the FBI. Things that can happen to a young girl in the wrong place at the wrong time. And they deliberately do it. Put themselves in danger. D’you know how many guns there are per capita in this country?” 

“They’ve got superpowers,” Scott said carefully, “and like I said. They’re going to do what they do anyway. Can’t stop them, so. Best to just try and help them. This Protectors thing is a great idea. Gives them a support group. Combat training would be a good next step.” 

“It’ll make it worse.”

“No, it’ll give them the tools to get themselves out of the trouble that they’re going to be putting themselves into anyway. With or without your approval. You saw Amadeus’ lab. Kids who can replicate Pym tech in a couple of weeks and figure out how to secretly power it off-grid are gonna do what they want. Trying to stop them just because ‘kids should be kids’ is just gonna make them hide stuff from you.” 

“I know that. That’s why I put you in the Initiative,” Jimmy said. 

Scott let out a startled laugh. “Yeah, like I was gonna snitch on them. What the hell.”

“You told me about Cindy.” 

“Only because she got hurt by something in the Quantum Realm! I… okay. I didn’t want them to go in there, but I didn’t have much of a choice.” Scott scrubbed his hands over his face. “Jesus, what a mess. Hey, don’t break up the Initiative or whatever you were going to do, okay? It means a lot to them. It’s not Cindy’s fault or anything, it’s mine. Should’ve tried to be more firm.” 

“I’m not breaking up the Initiative,” Jimmy said slowly, “and while I think Amadeus’ idea is reckless, perhaps there’s something to its logic.”

Scott looked up hopefully. “You guys tried using the canister already?”

“Not yet. Or at least. Not that I’m aware of,” Jimmy said, tired. “I was hoping I’d be able to trust you to at least keep me updated. Even if you couldn’t stop them from doing what they do.”

Scott set his jaw, though he looked unhappy about it. “That’s a corkscrew way of doing things. It wouldn’t be hard to get them to trust _you_ enough to keep you updated. Like I said, they love you.” 

“I’m not that good with people,” Jimmy said wryly. “Not compared to you. It’s only been what, two weeks? And they’ve already let you into their projects. I think if you give Cindy and Amadeus a bit of time they’d come round. Even after what just happened. If they haven’t already.”

“I’ve got a daughter. Older kids aren’t that much different,” Scott said. Jimmy watched him closely, but Scott just sipped his coffee instead of being crushed by grief at the reminder of Cassie’s loss. He believed in the Protectors’ latest wild project then. Enough that it’d given him hope. Jimmy knew what that was like. First few weeks after the Snap, he’d been willing to believe in anything too. “So, uh. You’re not kicking _me_ out of the Initiative?”

“No.” 

“Okay.” Scott blinked rapidly. “Um, why’re you here then?”

“Checking in.” It was a small lie. Jimmy had to admit to himself that he missed Scott. Missed coming home to him every night, hearing him talk about the kids or his day or the past. It’d gotten comfortable, even. Jimmy was used to what little life he had outside his job orbiting his work, hooking up whenever he had the urge, working when he didn’t. Church in the small space between weeks. He’d never felt that it was a lonely life until Scott. 

“Okay, well. I’m not drinking myself to death or anything,” Scott said cautiously. 

Jimmy forced a smile. “Glad to see it.” 

“Though, you know. If you wanted to catch up after work for drinks, or whatever won’t burn our wallets, we could do that. Might feel a lot less like snitching. Especially if the kids are OK with it,” Scott said, leaning forward a little, grinning playfully. 

Jimmy took in a slow breath. Even in rumpled clothes and a faded bathrobe, Scott was gorgeous. Especially when he smiled like that, full of mischief and inviting more. Jimmy took a sip of coffee to cover his sudden nervousness. “We’ll see.” 

Scott deflated. “Okay.” 

“You’re going to have to work to patch things up with the kids first.”

“Oh, that. Yeah. I’ve got plans. Groveling usually worked with Cassie, I think maybe groveling plus bribes might help here.” 

“I _do_ want to be present whenever Amadeus decides to experiment with quantum energy,” Jimmy said firmly. 

“Tell them that yourself.” 

“I have.”

“In an enthusiastic and supportive way, or in a ‘this is probably illegal and it will go all wrong’ sort of way? Because that matters,” Scott said dryly. 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Jimmy said, and Scott started to laugh. 

“Man, I missed that. Trying to argue with you over weird shit.” 

“You try to argue. _I_ know I’m right.” Scott had missed…? “Also, you’re the one who moved out.” Scott stopped chuckling, growing sober. Jimmy had spoiled the mood again. As he usually did. He set the coffee aside. “I should get going.”

“Okay. Thanks for checking in.” Scott got to his feet, walking Jimmy to the door. “And for telling me about Cindy. I mean, I asked Kamala, but I couldn’t get much out of her.”

“Ask Yukio if you really want an answer to anything.” Jimmy turned at the door, a little nervous, a little regretful. “And sure, we should catch up now and then about what they’re up to. Maybe twice a week?” His schedule could manage that. Any more was probably going to be greedy.

Scott brightened up. “Great.”


	6. Chapter 6

Having Jimmy technically on board with The Plan meant being picked up after school in Jimmy’s This Is Obviously An Unmarked Police Car. Which was OK, because Cindy was already in the car with cups of boba tea. She passed Kamala her usual order—honey lemon with pearls—and sunk back in the front passenger seat as Jimmy pulled out into traffic. 

“The others will meet us there,” Jimmy said, watching traffic. 

“Including Scott?” Kamala asked, with a quick glance at Cindy. Cindy scowled, looking out of the window. 

“Yes, including Scott,” Jimmy said patiently. “He _is_ the Avenger still assigned to the Initiatives.”

“I want to trade up for Thor,” Cindy muttered. She didn’t sound that angry though. Yukio had finally talked Cindy down on the group chat around midnight and Cindy had been chill during the morning, as far as Kamala could tell.

“How’re you feeling?” Kamala asked as she sipped from her cup. 

“Fine. Doesn’t even hurt now until you poke it. Deus said he synthesised an antidote last night but I don’t think I need it. Apparently whatever attacked us was like a hybrid of a bunch of micro-animals and deep-water fish or something.” Cindy sounded pointedly indifferent. 

“And you’re staying hydrated?” Jimmy asked, as they coasted down the road. 

Cindy rolled her eyes. “Yes _mum_.” 

Kamala saw Jimmy smirk faintly through the rearview mirror. “How’d you do on your geography test?”

Cindy scowled at Jimmy. “Seriously?”

“Very seriously.”

“Third best grade in class.” Cindy stuck out her tongue.

“Only third?” 

Cindy threw up her hands. “Auugh! I’m going to end up developing a complex. And needing therapy.” 

“Congrats,” Kamala offered. 

“Don’t you have a history paper due next Monday? How’s that going?” Jimmy met Kamala’s eyes briefly through the rearview mirror. 

Kamala winced. “Fine. It’s going great.” 

“Good to hear,” Jimmy said blandly. “I’m glad to see that you’re both taking school at least as seriously as you’re taking the Protectors Initiative.” 

Kamala shrank back into the seat and palmed out her phone.

 **Kamala** : uhoh. lecture imminent  
**Cindy** : ha, watch this 

“Of course,” Cindy said, sipping her tea with a deceptively casual grin. “Hey, Scott was staying with you right?” 

Jimmy actually flinched. “How did you know that?”

“Feminine intuition,” Cindy lied. 

“I sense you’re not being forthright with me, young lady, but yes, the utilities at Scott’s house were disconnected, and until his stipend came in from the Avengers he was unable to afford to get things back in order,” Jimmy said. 

“Wow, that’s so nice of you,” Cindy said brightly. “No wonder he has a crush on you.” 

Jimmy actually slowed down and frowned at Cindy. His ears were reddening. “What? He does?” 

“Well yeah,” Cindy said, blinking in surprise. “Wow. You have a thing for him too? What the hell! He is like, seriously average.” 

“ _Cindy_ ,” Kamala said, shocked, then to her horror, she burst into uncontrollable giggles. Jimmy's cheeks flushed and he pulled up at the sidewalk, rubbing a hand over his face. 

“I don’t even get it. He’s not even that cute,” Cindy said, genuinely mystified. “I mean, he’s a nice guy, but surely that’s a pretty low bar?” 

“Not. A further word,” Jimmy said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Christ, I don’t even. What the heck.”

 **Kamala** : wow I think u broke Jimmy  
**Yukio** : ????  
**Cindy** : ;) my master plan  
**Kamala** : to do wat  
**Cindy** : get them both off our backs  
**Yukio** : what’s happening

“Firstly,” Jimmy said, after a long moment, “that’s inappropriate. You shouldn't have told me that.”

“You want help with Scott?” Cindy asked innocently. 

“No! No. Good grief, young lady. No. Even if you were right, Scott’s very vulnerable right now. It wouldn’t be remotely ethical to take advantage of that. All right? So. Leave it.” 

“Vulnerable, right,” Cindy said skeptically. “He’s like. A middle class white American cis dude. He was born with a higher luck stat.”

“Not what I meant,” Jimmy said severely, "and I'm going to do my best to forget what you just said. As should you. And Kamala." 

“Fine, fine. Okay. Don’t be mad.” Cindy curled up on the seat and drank from her cup. “Sorry.”

“And don’t mention any of this to Scott,” Jimmy said, eyeballing her. 

“Pinky promise,” Cindy agreed. 

“Promise,” Kamala echoed. 

**Yukio** : u guys ok?  
**Kamala** : ya  
**Cindy** : jimmy wants to do the Right Thing by scott etc  
**Yukio** : aww  
**Cindy** : he’s so dying alone  
**Yukio** : I think it’s sweet  
**Cindy** : is sad is wat  
**Kamala** : mayb we save the world first? priorities  
**Cindy** : my plan is  
**Cindy** : mayb if jimmy had a life outside work  
**Cindy** : he wld be less of a control freak?  
**Yukio** : doubt it  
**Yukio** : (^▽^;)  
**Kamala** : matchmaking is very auntie  
**Cindy** : omg  
**Kamala** : :)

“You’re both being very quiet,” Jimmy said suspiciously. 

“We’re drinking boba,” Cindy said. 

“While texting each other about…?” Jimmy looked amused. Maybe a little resigned. 

“About my period cramps,” Cindy said, with a completely straight face. Kamala started drinking more tea just to hold in her laughter. 

Instead of recoiling, Jimmy glanced at Cindy. “Why? Have they been different or worse after your injury?” 

“No!” Cindy yelped. 

“You need supplies? We can make a detour.”

“No. No, I’m good. Thanks,” Cindy said firmly. 

**Kamala** : ahahaha  
**Cindy** : fksghdfk  
**Yukio** : ?  
**Cindy** : THIS USUALLY WORKS ON ASIAN DADS  
**Kamala** : wahaha 

They arrived at their destination with no further incident. Some districts had been hit harder by the Snap than others, and the industrial zone Jimmy drove into looked abandoned. Nobody had even bothered to come through and tag up all the empty walls. They were the last to arrive. Ned and Amadeus were busy doing last minute checks on coding on laptops. Scott and Yukio were setting up machinery loaded off the back of a large van, all of which connected up to a glass cylinder with metallic panels pressed to its flank. In the centre of the glass cylinder was an empty hamster cage. The canister of quantum energy was encased in the maw of a machine studded with pylons beside it. 

“Really,” Jimmy said to Cindy as she whipped out her phone. 

She took the photo anyway. “This is way too cool not to document.”

“You do realise geotagging yourself is a security breach,” Jimmy said. He sounded more resigned than annoyed. Jimmy walked over to the cylinder to glance at the hamster cage, then wandered over to Amadeus. Kamala and Cindy sidled over to Yukio.

“Need anything?” Kamala asked. “Drinks? Snacks?” 

“No, we’re good. Thanks,” Yukio said, with a quick grin. 

“Standing by it is,” Cindy said. They sat on the edge of the floor of the open van and watched. Eventually, Jimmy stopped hassling Amadeus and walked over to lean against the van, arms folded. He pointedly didn’t look at Scott, instead studying the canister. 

The cylinder eventually came online with a low hum and a warm, golden glow. Yukio and Scott retreated a few steps as Amadeus said, “Casting True Resurrection on Hamtaro—”

“Really?” Jimmy said, though he smiled. 

“—three, two, one.” Amadeus ignored him. The canister began to glow, the hum deepening. A pale light grew over the ashes in the hamster cage, twisting and shifting. Cindy let out a tiny gasp. The light was solidifying. Growing faintly hamster-shaped. 

“It’s working?” Scott whispered, his face strained with fierce hope. 

“Resonance signature isn’t aligning,” Ned said, typing furiously. “Something’s not right.”

“Did you guys put all the ashes back?” Cindy asked. “Even the ones you used on your DNA testing?” 

“We did, but that’s not it,” Amadeus said distractedly, as he worked. “The paradox isn’t—”

“Is that meant to happen?” Jimmy asked warily. The hamster-shaped light was growing. As it pressed against the plastic and wire cage, the wires began to bulge, then the cage sprang apart, scattering bedding and feed. 

“The ashes. They’re disappearing.” Kamala leaped to her feet, fists balled. 

“Another Quantum Realm animal?” Cindy was on her feet too, leaping up to the roof of the van for a better vantage point. The light was solidifying, going translucent, then opaque. Sinews and bone spun out of nowhere, then skin, then golden fur. The cylinder moaned, its structural frame tested to the limit. There was a dull squeal from the reactor.

“Shut it off!” Jimmy yelled at Amadeus. 

“Trying!” Amadeus was bent over the laptop. Ned was just staring at the cylinder, eyes wide. The lights over the cylinder abruptly went dark. Scott had darted over and disconnected one of the cables. 

Inside the cylinder, something gigantic and golden-furred bared arm-length teeth and chittered angrily. 

“Dude. Is that Hamtaro?” Ned asked weakly. 

“It’s the same colour but… Obviously fucking not!” Amadeus hissed, wide-eyed. “But. It’s. _Awesome_.” 

Jimmy strode over to the laptops with a stormy expression. “Put it back.” 

“Slight problem. We’re out of quantum energy.” Amadeus nodded at the canister. 

“Guys. It _is_ Hamtaro,” Cindy said slowly. “You just. Brought it back but. Embiggened.” She started to laugh, joyous at first, then choking into brittle, gasping sobs. “You _did_ it.” 

“Check the DNA,” Ned said. “Scott, could you… Thanks.” Scott reconnected the cable. The cylinder glowed briefly blue as lines scanned over the fur. “That’s a… well, that’s not really Hamtaro’s DNA signature, it’s like, a patched signature—”

There was an ugly cracking sound. The fur in the cylinder started to shift as the creature within it struggled and kicked angrily at the glass. “Guys,” Kamala said. She yelped as bone spikes abruptly drove through the glass, shattering it. Hamtaro shook glass out of its fur, still chittering loudly. On all fours, it was bigger than the van. Bone spikes had punched out along its flanks and back, and it had two sets of beady black eyes. It hissed loudly. 

“Get back,” Jimmy said, drawing his gun.

“We’re not shooting a hamster,” Scott said sharply. 

“That look like a hamster to you?” Jimmy asked, incredulous. 

Hamtaro shrilled as Cindy webbed one of its feet to the ground. It jerked free, starting forward, then chittered and backed off as Kamala extended herself until she towered over the not!hamster. She made a grab for Hamtaro, but it shot out of range with surprising speed, charging for the exit of the warehouse. 

Yukio was there first—she flicked her whip at Hamtaro, snapping it an inch away from its nose. The not!hamster flinched back, screeching. “Gotcha!” Kamala grabbed it carefully by a few of the spines, holding it in the air as its feet spun wildly and it hissed its rage. Scott tossed a Pym device onto the hamster and it shrunk down to the size of a cat. It chittered in fury, scratching off the device, but didn’t re-embiggen even as Jimmy darted over and grabbed it, dropping it into a large crate. It ran around in the crate, scrabbling angrily at the walls. 

“Wow,” Amadeus said, looking down at Hamtaro. “Hamtaro 2.0 is amazeballs.” 

“Well, that worked. _Not_.” Cindy peered dubiously at the spiny creature. 

Amadeus grumbled under his breath. “It’s probably something in the equations. I’ll go over it again with Yukio. But the _principle_ worked,” he told Jimmy defensively. 

Jimmy had been staring at Hamtaro with a frozen expression on his face. He blinked slowly when Amadeus spoke, as though startled, then he let out a shaky laugh. “Jesus. I don’t even… you guys did it. I should never have had any doubt. I’m so proud of all of you.”

Kamala and the others exchanged wary glances. “Really?” Kamala said. 

“Not pissed over the trip to the quantum realm anymore?” Ned asked slowly.

“Or the time we hijacked your car?” Yukio asked, perking up. 

“Or when we blew out the electrical grid in Palo Alto for twenty minutes?” Amadeus said. 

“Or when we hacked the FBI database?” Cindy asked. 

Jimmy frowned at them. “Wait, what? This is not an offer of a general amnesty.” He twitched as Scott laughed and slung an arm around his shoulders. 

“C’mon. They’re awesome, we all know it. So when do we start bringing everyone else back?” Scott asked, hope naked in his face. He glanced down as Hamtaro snarled. “Maybe after some of the kinks are ironed out.”

“What kinks? Hamtaro came back more awesome,” Amadeus said.

“Kinda doubt everybody’s gonna want to come back with spikes and extra eyeballs,” Ned said, then hesitated. “Maybe.”

Jimmy cleared his throat and carefully levered Scott’s arm off his shoulders. “New DNA structure aside, there are still a few logistical issues. Ideally, there’d be a way to reverse the disintegration process without actually requiring the residue. And we’re going to need a more efficient way of acquiring quantum energy—”

Scott gawked at him. “These kids just did the impossible and you’re going to give them a B+?” 

“B+? This is a B- result at best,” Jimmy said, and started to chuckle as Cindy and Amadeus instantly scowled. “Kidding. I’m going to have to make a report, but after that? Dinner’s on me.”

#

“Why’d you ask everyone to keep things to themselves?” Scott asked. Jimmy had dropped off everyone else who needed a lift after dinner. Scott was the last, and it was getting pretty late.

“Don’t want to give their families false hope,” Jimmy said. 

Scott gave him an incredulous look. “False hope? You saw what happened.” 

“And that hamster-creature needs to be put under observation. The method Amadeus used isn’t suitable to mass-replication. There’s no proof he might be able to stabilise it. Or what would happen if he used it on incomplete residue. Or how we’d bring back people whose residue is already lost. It…” Jimmy trailed off. He forced a smile. “Sorry. I should switch off.” 

“Nah, I see your point.” Scott sank against the car seat. He didn’t even know what happened to Cassie’s ‘residue’—she’d been at school when the Snap had happened. Paxton hadn’t been in any state to discuss anything. Hell, Scott wasn’t even sure where Maggie had disappeared. And the Pyms’ residue had long blown off the roof by the time Scott had been rescued. 

“But I’m confident that they will iron it out,” Jimmy said, into the strained pause. He reached over, patting Scott gently on the knuckles, though he didn’t take his eyes off the road. “It’s amazing what they’ve done.”

“And you were already right up on their case,” Scott said.

“Can’t help it. Maybe it’s a cultural thing. The inclination toward being a tiger parent. Always trying to push kids to do better. To be the best at something. Grades.” Jimmy shook his head slowly, rueful. “We perpetrate what was done to us when we were children. Our parents tried to escape the societal consequences of being a minority by working hard. Pushed their kids to study hard. As though mere education might help minority kids transcend the way they’d be treated because of their skin colour or their religion.” Jimmy sighed. “Still we try, I guess.”

“You’re in a mood,” Scott said carefully, unsure of how to parse it and not wanting to give offense. 

“Could say that.” Jimmy’s lip curled briefly. “There aren’t any Asians in the Avengers. Or Hispanic people, or Native Americans. Amadeus’ mum was incredulous when I said the Protectors was kinda a youth Avengers initiative. Like she couldn’t believe that could even be a thing. That her son could be an Avenger. Even though he’s already one of the smartest people in the world.” 

“Is there a similar initiative for other minority groups?”

“Possibly. If so, I’m not sure how they’re going. Or who’s in charge of them. I had to push for my own team. And for the people within it.” 

Scott blinked. “Isn’t this some kind of FBI-Avengers thing? Why are you guys keeping secrets from each other?” 

“Not exactly,” Jimmy hedged. He shot Scott a sidelong glance. “I suppose I never got around to telling you. I’m an FBI agent. But I’m also a SHIELD agent.” 

“What.” Scott was only vaguely familiar with SHIELD. Sometimes Hank complained about them. “Uh. Wasn’t Captain America… SHIELD for a bit… then not? There was some problem.” He’d still been in jail at the time, and Cap had only mentioned SHIELD in passing on the way to Germany. Scott had been too overawed to ask.

“After that business with HYDRA—”

“Who’re they?”

“Very weaponised Nazis.”

“ _Seriously_?” Scott frowned. “Where are they and who do I punch?”

Jimmy shook his head. “Ongoing issue. They destabilised SHIELD by infiltrating its ranks. After that, Director Fury seeded surviving loyal SHIELD agents in various areas around the world. To watch over assigned assets. Activate and support them where necessary.” 

“And you got those kids?” 

“No. The Protectors Initiative is a personal project that I pushed for. But I did get assigned an asset list that got updated over the years.” 

“Like who?” Scott tried to recall who else he knew was in San Francisco. “Uh, Spiderman?” 

“You, for example.” Jimmy offered him a wry smile as Scott stiffened. “Come on. Wasn’t it obvious that I was going easy on you over that whole business with Ghost? I could’ve had your house staked out. Or rigged with cameras and bugs.” 

Come to think of it, it _had_ been rather too easy to “outsmart” Jimmy. Especially given Jimmy’s work ethic. “Oh.” 

“That’s why I took the demotion. Not just because I didn’t want anyone else to suffer for the orders I was carrying out. I needed the extra time.” 

“So you’ve been doing SHIELD stuff? Not FBI stuff?” 

“Often it overlaps,” Jimmy said. His jaw set briefly. “When there’s chaos in the world, there’s always something trying to take advantage of the situation. HYDRA, for one. Been busy dealing with that.” 

“I would’ve liked to help with Nazi punching activities,” Scott said pointedly.

Jimmy chuckled. “Not all solutions to problems can be resoundingly solved with fisticuffs.”

“Would’ve made me feel better about life,” Scott said, and tried prodding Jimmy on the issue all the way until Jimmy pulled up outside Scott’s house. 

“‘Night,” Jimmy said. He smiled. 

“You uh. Want to come in for a drink?” Scott asked, because what the hell. They’d possibly taken one small step towards saving the world today. The universe, even. Scott deserved this.

Jimmy gave him a strange look. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why’d you say that?” Scott asked, startled. 

“It’ll be an imposition.”

“Oh, come on. I imposed on you for two _weeks_.” 

“Also,” Jimmy said, very carefully, his ears reddening, “I know you’re in a vulnerable place right now and—”

“Hey.” Scott dared to lean over, pressing his palm onto Jimmy’s knee. “I asked whether you wanted a drink. Not for the keys to your place. Though. I really did like living with you, even if I was kinda mooching off you, maybe that was the point, so what I’m trying to say in a non-creepy way is, I missed having the keys to your place. And I’m a grown-ass guy in my forties, I’m supposed to only be emotionally vulnerable when I’m watching sports…” 

Scott trailed off as he leaned even closer, until he was nearly climbing into Jimmy’s lap. The kiss, when it finally happened, was nervous and quick. Then fingers clenched in Scott’s collar and pulled him over.


	7. Chapter 7

Hamtaro was running furiously in a wheel in its new cage, its feet a blur. “He’s still super aggro,” Amadeus said, as Kamala peeked into the cage, “but as long as nobody’s in biting range he’s happy to eat treats and run on the wheel.” There was a small bowl of pellets and fresh veggies in a corner of the cage, along with a bowl of water. 

“Cool,” Kamala said. She still had mixed feelings about Hamtaro 2.0. 

The warehouse had been transformed into a sprawling version of Amadeus’ lab, powered by an upgraded version of Pym’s pocket reactor. Cabling was tacked under new workbenches and a slowly rebuilt version of the resonance chamber. Yukio and Amadeus were perched beside a workbench, building something that looked like a fat silver fish. Ned and Cindy were in school today. 

Kamala looked around. “Where’s Scott?”

Amadeus shrugged. “Personal errand. Made us promise not to go into the Quantum Realm without him.” 

“Jimmy checked in during the morning. Said he had to go somewhere for maybe a couple of days.” Yukio grinned over the device she was building. “I think something happened.” 

“Between Jimmy and Scott?” Kamala climbed onto a stool next to Amadeus and set down her laptop on an empty spot. 

“Jesus, you people,” Amadeus said. He was checking code on his laptop. 

Kamala ignored him. “How’d you guess?” 

“Jimmy was a lot less tense around Scott. He even made a joke. It was cute,” Yukio said, eyeballing Amadeus when he made a loud sniff. 

“That’s their business. Not ours,” Amadeus said pointedly. “Heard about Cindy and the car incident. Didn’t she pretty much out Scott to Jimmy just to get Jimmy to maybe cut us some slack? That’s not cool.”

“Jimmy would've read Scott’s FBI profile. Same as we did. Everything’s in there, it was scary. Including past partners. Guys and girls.” Kamala coughed. “But yeah. Even though Jimmy already knew about Scott, it wasn’t appropriate. Jimmy told her off.” 

“Did she listen?” Amadeus asked dryly. 

“Probably not,” Yukio said. 

Amadeus shook his head and turned back to the bot. “I like Cindy, I really do. But if you think she cares at all about the Protectors, or about the scholarship, or you guys, you’re mistaken. Cindy cares about one thing. Getting her dad back. She’ll burn whatever she needs to get there.” 

Kamala scowled. “She’s not like that. She just talks without thinking things through sometimes.” 

“Believe what you want. I respect her motives. And her drive.” Whatever Amadeus was fixing twitching and sparked. He flinched and quickly unplugged it from the generator. 

Yukio glanced at Kamala, then back at Amadeus. “I don’t think she’s that bad,” Yukio said. 

“I didn’t say she was _bad_. That’s such a binary way of looking at things. I lost my dad to the Snap too. I know how she feels,” Amadeus said.

Yukio raised her eyebrows. “I lost both my parents,” she said, in a tight voice. Then she forced a smile to look a shade more like her usual peppy self. “But I don’t believe in ‘any means necessary’.” 

“Neither do I,” Amadeus said. He stared evenly at Yukio. “Cindy does.”

“I don’t believe that,” Yukio said calmly. “What do you think, Kamala?”

“Uh.” Kamala had gone on patrol with Cindy once, and once only. She’d been surprised by the way violence came so easily to Cindy. Nothing permanent done to the people they caught, and some of the patrol had even been fun, but Kamala never did it again. “I think she’s a very intense person, but she’d never like. Throw us under the bus or something. What do you have against her?”

“Nothing,” Amadeus said, a little impatiently. “That’s what I just said. I’ve got nothing against her. I… look. Forget I said anything.” 

Amadeus had spoiled the mood. Kamala tried concentrating on her homework, but the details kept slipping away. This was normal, she tried telling herself. It wasn’t as though the Protectors got along all the time. Especially at the start, when Amadeus was convinced he was better than everyone, when Cindy clearly thought the Initiative was a waste of time, when Yukio just smiled and said little and kept texting her girlfriend. Only Ned had taken it seriously and Ned wasn’t even technically on the team.

Finally, Kamala gave up on her homework. “What are you guys building?” 

Yukio was already assembling the machine. “It’s a drone,” Yukio said, holding up the fish. “We’ll send it through first. To scan an area for levels of quantum energy and check for creatures.” 

“My first few attempts to make a Pym drone didn’t work. Long story short, Pym was using a different formulation of his Particle for the discs, his suits, and his shuttle. Had to make a fourth formulation for this.” Amadeus typed something and the fish lit up around its belly with a blue ring. “Ready to go, I think.” 

“So with more quantum energy… isn’t that going to take like. One canister per thing in the world?” Kamala couldn’t even imagine the effort that was going to take. 

“I’ve been thinking about that. I think quantum energy is like a catalyst. Or a disruptor. Analysing Hamtaro’s DNA, it looks like we changed an equation between Hamtaro, the residual resonance in the area, and the residue. Built that all into Hamtaro’s personalised paradoxical disintegration,” Amadeus said. 

“It took six Infinity Stones to cause the Snap,” Yukio said, when Kamala looked puzzled. “We undid the effect of the Snap on Hamtaro by pulling one of the Stone effects out of alignment. I’m thinking it was the Reality Stone. Given how Hamtaro changed.” 

Kamala frowned. “So we could maybe… pull something else out of alignment? Uh… maybe the Time stone? I don’t think people would mind being like, a couple of months younger or something. Back to what they were before they got kicked through the onion of reality.”

Amadeus groaned. “I’m beginning to regret ever offering that analogy. But yeah. I’m thinking, _assuming_ everything works out that simply, if we can tweak the effects of Time or very slightly tweak Space that would be the best. We need more quantum energy to experiment though.”

“And that’s where this comes in.” Yukio picked up the drone. “I think we should name it.”

“I don’t name drones,” Amadeus scoffed. 

Yukio made a face at him. “Kamala, you name it.” 

“Uh. Astrofish?” 

“Okay. Astrofish it is. Where do we set it off?” Yukio asked Amadeus.

Amadeus shrugged. “Doesn’t matter for a first run. Here would be fine.” He checked something on his laptop as Yukio set Astrofish carefully down on the workbench. She pulled the cloth off a shrouded device beyond Amadeus that turned out to be a shrunken-down version of the Gate machine in Amadeus’ lab. Yukio popped the fish into its maw as the machine powered up, and it disappeared. 

Kamala peered eagerly at Amadeus’ laptop. There were a few pulses of static, then a familiar image of the Quantum Realm’s odd colours flickered into view. The Astrofish’s motors powered on and it floated. Lucky—it was nowhere near the ground. 

“Can’t we just make bigger versions of the Astrofish and use them to collect quantum energy?” Kamala asked. 

“Possibly, but that’s not a solution either. I don’t want to stick to canisters, it’s inefficient. I’m hoping to create something that could maybe just stream quantum energy from a feeding point within the Quantum Realm out to a receiving point here,” Amadeus said. He had plugged an Xbox controller to his laptop, and was using it to swim the Astrofish around. “Nothing out here. Not much quantum energy either. Maybe if we move out to the car park… what?”

Yukio had clapped her hand over Amadeus’ wrist. She was very pale, and was looking across the warehouse towards the workbench with Hamtaro’s cage. Towering beside it, looking into the cage with arms crossed behind his back, was someone who looked so out of place in the warehouse that Kamala blinked slowly, her brain unable for a moment to register what she was seeing. 

_Thanos_.

In the flesh, Thanos looked considerably less ridiculous than the Avengers’ archival footage indicated. He _was_ purple, with a strange chin, and was wearing retro-looking 80s-looking arcade game armour, but in the flesh, he exuded an implacable, calm menace. Thanos was _massive_. He straightened up, his hands loose at his side. The hand sheathed in the gauntlet was scarred to the shoulder with ugly knots of burn scars. The Infinity Gauntlet was visibly cracked, but the stones still glittered on his knuckles. 

Kamala had always wondered what she would do when faced with certain death. It had been an abstract concept on patrol, even when she _did_ run into danger. Now she knew. Her mind was clear. “Guys. Run. I’ll buy you time.” 

“I’m not running,” Amadeus said shakily. Yukio didn’t move either.

“Peace,” Thanos said. He straightened up, making the warehouse itself look smaller around him. “I am not here to fight.” 

“What do you want?” Kamala asked tightly. Yukio’s hand was white-knuckled on her weapon.

“To offer a warning. The Stones told me about you. When you reversed what was done to this creature, I felt it.” Thanos tapped a finger against Hamtaro’s cage. “An impressive feat.”

“How about you put everything back? Then I won’t need to do any more impressive feats,” Amadeus said. His voice only quavered slightly. 

Thanos chuckled. The sound shook the table Kamala’s elbow was pressed to, rumbled through the floor. Cold sweat prickled down her shirt. “You, child, remind me of someone. Know this. It will not be possible for you to easily reverse what took six Infinity Stones and this Gauntlet to mete.” 

“So why do you care if we try?” Yukio asked quietly. “If it’s not possible?” 

“I said it would not be _easily_ reversed. But many things in this world _are_ possible.” Thanos studied his glove. “I could kill all three of you right now. It would be simple. Consider this your first and only warning. Should you continue on your current path, you _will_ make an enemy out of me.”

“You killed my _parents_ ,” Yukio snapped, the first spark of anger that Kamala had ever seen from her. “You are already my enemy.”

Thanos gave her an appraising look. “And what if I brought them back?” 

This made Yukio blink, startling her out of her temper. “What?”

“Yes, I could bring back your loved ones. Would that make you stop? Yours, and those of your friends. Come, now,” Thanos said, into the silence. He tapped the cage again. “Your experiments may bear fruit, they may not. Or the people you seek to save may turn out like this creature here. Irreparably mad, irreparably changed. Why risk it?”

“I…” Amadeus swallowed. “You’re lying. Can you even do that? Bring people back?”

“I wonder.” Thanos reached into the cage, grabbing Hamtaro. Kamala let out a stifled cry, and Yukio took a step forward. The red stone on Thanos’ gauntlet glowed. Hamtaro chittered as it began to shrink, until it was out of sight in Thanos’ huge palm. Thanos dropped something back into the cage. Hamtaro was now a normal-sized, squeaking dwarf hamster. No spikes. No extra set of eyes. Thanos smiled at their shock. “Think about it,” he said, and vanished.

#

They held their No Adults meeting on the roof of Cindy’s apartment block, which was the most central location for everyone. Amadeus paid for veggie burgers and milkshakes from the diner nearby and they sat on the roof with a picnic blanket.

“What happened?” Ned asked curiously. “I didn’t think the cake that Scott bought was that bad. You guys have been weird all day.”

“Wasn’t the cake,” Kamala said. The cake had been the reason why Scott had popped out for an hour—he’d gone to pick it up. An expensive surprise present. It’d been too sweet, and normally Kamala would’ve loved it—she hadn’t had cake since the Snap—but she could barely eat a slice. 

“So what? Hamtaro reverting is great news, isn’t it?” Cindy asked, frowning. “You think he’d pop back to 2.0?”

“Well. About that.” Amadeus balanced his laptop on his knees and popped up the screen. Played the only copy of the security footage that was left. 

“Shit,” Cindy said, in the frozen silence afterward. 

“Why’d you keep that from Scott?” Ned asked, wide-eyed. “What. I can’t even. I don’t even think that’s. Real?” 

“It’s the real deal all right,” Yukio said softly. 

Amadeus was staring at Cindy. “What?” Cindy asked him. “You… are you okay?”

“I’m okay. Thought I’d pee my pants but didn’t. Close thing though.” Amadeus exhaled. “So. The reason why I called this No Adults meeting. What Thanos said. His offer.” 

“You can’t be serious,” Ned burst out. “You’re thinking of taking him up on it?” 

“It’s true. What he says. Playing with quantum energy, trying to riff off stuff that even the Asgardians could barely understand? It could go really wrong.” Amadeus was watching Cindy closely.

She flushed and set down her burger. “Fuck you. You think I’m going to say ‘yes’ to Thanos? Sure, bring my dad back, fuck everything else in the universe? Only people in bad movies make those kinds of deals. Fuck _you_.”

“I didn’t say that,” Amadeus said quietly. 

“Him doing what he did accelerated the Earth’s doomsday clock. Half of all the plant life gone? The animals?” Cindy glowered at Amadeus. “I can fucking see that. You really think I can’t do that kinda math? No compromises.” 

“Okay, okay,” Yukio said placatingly. Amadeus sniffed, taking a bite out of his burger instead of answering.

“What I don’t get is. Why didn’t he just murder the three of you right then? Morbid as it is to think about it,” Ned said.

“I was thinking about that. He tried to make it out like he was giving us a chance. But he murdered kids when he did what he did. He’s purged entire homeworlds before, according to Thor’s notes.” Kamala didn’t have much appetite for eating. She drank the milkshake instead. “Maybe I’m putting too many human-ish motives on a bipedal human-ish looking alien.” 

“No, don’t knock yourself before you even say what you think. Go on,” Cindy said encouragingly.

“I was thinking. Maybe he regrets it. Maybe he finally saw what a really illogical thing he did. Like he’s having second thoughts,” Kamala said. 

“…if so, then why threaten us at all?” Amadeus asked. 

“I mean, him regretting it might be why he didn’t attack us outright,” Kamala said. 

“Maybe he didn’t disintegrate you guys because he can’t. You saw what happened to his arm. Something happened to him because of the Snap,” Cindy said thoughtfully. 

Ned was shaking his head. “We saw the Avengers footage out of Wakanda. Even post-Snap he could still teleport away. The Gauntlet still works.”

“The Space stone works. And the Reality stone, at least on hamsters,” Amadeus said, very slowly. “Everything else? Maybe doesn’t.” 

“The Infinity Stones didn’t look cracked to me. Only the Gauntlet,” Yukio said. She pursed her lips. “I really think we should tell Jimmy about this.” 

“Yeah, like he won’t freak out and make us stop.” Amadeus sniffed. “We’re on to something. That’s why Thanos even showed up. We’re on the right track.” 

“This is really…” Ned blew out a sigh. “I’m not even an official Protector. I mean, I tagged along because Deus said there’d be free food and we lost most of our usual Overwatch gang to the Snap. Going from hanging out with you guys to facing down Thanos? That’s a huge leap. I don’t even.”

“That’s exactly why I wanted to call this meeting,” Kamala said firmly. “I felt it wouldn’t be fair not to tell you guys.” She glanced at Amadeus, who looked away and finished his burger. “So—”

“The hell? You wanted to sit on this info?” Cindy glared at him.

“Because the right decision was obvious,” Amadeus shot back.

“You don’t get to make it for everyone!” Cindy snarled. 

“Hey, hey. Let Kamala speak,” Yukio said gently. 

Cindy subsided. “Oh. Sorry Kamala.”

“That’s OK. Yeah, I wanted everyone to know what they were getting into. Or getting out of, if that’s the case. No hard feelings either way. Facing down Thanos, yeah, that’s not what we signed up for,” Kamala said.

“We could get the Avengers involved,” Ned suggested. 

“Yeah, like they did much to Thanos the last time,” Cindy said, with an unimpressed curl to her mouth. 

“We’re probably going to have to get them involved at some point,” Amadeus said, “but if it’s right now, you know what’s gonna happen. Jimmy’s going to disband us and hand over the project to Dr Banner.” 

“Which might not be a bad thing,” Kamala said. At Cindy’s incredulous stare, she held up her palms. “He’s a gamma ray expert or something, right?” 

“Nothing to do with quantum energy,” Cindy said. She cracked her knuckles. “No. We’ve gone way further than Dr Banner and the Avengers. I mean, Scott said their solution is to look for Tony Stark? What even the hell. Besides, we’re on the right track. I vote we keep doing our thing.” 

“I’m in, but I might have to bunk over at someone’s place,” Yukio said. At Kamala’s startled look, Yukio said sheepishly, “I kinda live with the world’s most powerful telepath. We’ve got someone in the mansion who has teleportation, which is how I’ve been getting home to Westchester, but.”

“Oh, right. Uh, you can stay over with me for as long as you need to. We’ve got the space,” Cindy said, with a reassuring smile. “Mum will love to have you over. Don’t sweat it.” 

“Ellie going to be OK?” Kamala asked. Yukio nodded. “Ned?”

Ned sighed. “Yeah, I’m in. What the hell. I mean, it’s between Thanos or the world collapsing on itself in a few decades while I’m still alive so. We’re screwed either way.”

“Loving the optimism,” Amadeus said, though he playfully cuffed Ned on the shoulder. “I’m in. Fuck Thanos.” 

“I’m in,” Kamala said, even though she felt cold sweat prickle down her back again. “But I’d feel better if we could think of something we could do. Against Thanos.” 

“About that,” Yukio said. She tugged over Amadeus’ laptop and typed briefly on it, then turned it around to show a mini version of the dimensional layer map. “The laws of physics don’t work the same way over different dimensions. What if that’s not the only thing that doesn’t work the same way across dimensions?”

“Oh, I see.” Amadeus started to grin. “Should’ve thought of that.” 

“It’s a big if,” Yukio said. 

“I think there was a jump in logic there,” Cindy said, frowning at the screen. “What are we talking about?” 

“We already know how to get to the Quantum Realm,” Yukio said, “and there are Asgardian notes on how to get to the others thanks to Thor. There might be a dimension out there where the Infinity Stones don’t work.” 

“Laws of physics still mostly worked in the Quantum Realm,” Amadeus said. 

“I like the sound of this one. ‘Negative Zone’,” Ned read out. “Where all matter is ‘negatively charged’? What? That doesn’t make sense.” 

“Oh, the antimatter dimension. Sounded weird to me when I read the notes,” Amadeus said. He made a face. “I kinda suspected a mistranslation or something. Might be a good bet though. I’ll do the research.” He blinked as Cindy held out a hand. “Yeah?”

“We got this far because of you,” Cindy said. She smiled wryly. “Even if you’re an ass.” 

Amadeus laughed and shook her hand. “We got this far because of _everyone_. Now we just need to keep doing the work.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Refs:  
> https://www.quora.com/What-happened-to-the-Infinity-Gauntlet-after-the-snap-of-Thanos  
> https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/7/8560555/marvel-infinity-stones-avengers-infinity-war-movie  
> http://www.thescienceof.org/physics/whats-a-positron-anyway/


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Warning** : This chapter changes the overall rating of the story to E.

“How was your tr—” Scott muffled a yelp as he was shoved against the wall next to the door and kissed. Fighting his grin, he hauled Jimmy against him and nudged his door closed with a foot. Jimmy’s fingers tickled down his jaw, up around the back of his neck, compressing a harsh noise of relief between them as they kissed and kissed. 

Somehow Scott managed the presence of mind to nudge them over towards his couch, vaguely glad that he’d thought to tidy up the house today. They very nearly made it all the way, but tipped over into one of the armchairs. Jimmy winced as he got elbowed in the ribs and Scott ended up snickering as he got his teeth against Jimmy’s throat, breathing him in, licking against the sharp crease of Jimmy’s perfectly pressed shirt collar. 

“Missed me?” Scott asked facetiously. 

“Was thinking about you all the way home,” Jimmy murmured, stroking his hands appreciatively up and under Scott’s shirt. 

“Maybe you shouldn’t go away so often.” Now that the kids seemed fairly comfortable with Scott, Jimmy was taking longer and longer trips away. This last one had run four days, right after a set of back-to-back short trips. The time they squeezed together in between never really felt enough. 

At least he wasn’t the only one in free-fall. Jimmy was breathing in hoarse gasps, hips pushing up against Scott’s thigh. Scott’s shirt got tossed on the floor, and Jimmy made a low hum of appreciation as he flicked his gaze down Scott’s body. Always a nice little boost to the ego. Scott grinned and loosened Jimmy’s tie, looping it coyly in his fingers. Jimmy laughed. “I think there won’t be any trips for a while,” he said.

“Yeah, you said that the last time. And the last time.” Scott popped open the top button on Jimmy’s shirt, then the next, mouthing over the skin underneath. 

“SHIELD assignments tend to be errat—ngh—erratic.” Jimmy curled fingers lightly into Scott’s hair with a low gasp as Scott nipped him. “Scott,” he growled, already impatient. 

“Yeah?” It was an awkward fit against the armchair, half-sprawled over Jimmy’s lap with a knee against the carpet. Scott could feel the bulge in Jimmy’s pants pressed against his ribs as he tugged Jimmy’s tie off and kissed his way down Jimmy’s chest, unbuttoning as he went. 

Jimmy never pushed. His fingers settled on Scott’s shoulders, kneading as he sat up against the couch to give Scott more room. “You look ridiculous,” he said, stifling laughter in hiccuped gasps as Scott looped Jimmy’s tie over his shoulders and smirked up at him. 

“Well _sorry_ , I was playing the drums when you rang the doorbell. Wasn’t exactly dressed to be sexy since I didn’t even know you were flying back.” Scott pretended to huff with indignation even as he knelt on the carpet and got Jimmy’s belt off.

“You look sexy no matter what you’re wearing,” Jimmy said, running his fingertips down Scott’s bared biceps and arms. 

“You just said I look ridiculous.”

“ _And_ sexy. Ridiculously sexy.”

Scott laughed. “Wow. That’s. Very nearly a dad joke. Cute.” He kissed Jimmy over the bulge in his pants before Jimmy could reply, and Jimmy let out a strangled noise as Scott tried to tug the zipper down with his teeth. Not that it worked. Jimmy sank back into the armchair in a fit of laughter as Scott rolled his eyes and scowled and used his fingers. “That always looks so much easier in porn,” Scott complained. 

“Uh huh,” Jimmy managed to gasp, before he burst out laughing again. 

“I’m so going to leave you high and dry,” Scott threatened him, but Jimmy merely covered his mouth and turned his face away, still shaking with mirth. Rolling his eyes, Scott pinched Jimmy on his inner thigh. Jimmy flinched but didn’t calm down, not until Scott grumbled and hooked down the waistband of Jimmy’s boxers. Nudging his nose into the sprinkling of hair against Jimmy’s toned belly, Scott pointedly licked the tip of Jimmy’s stiffening cock.

“Got your attention now?” Scott glanced up. He liked this part. Unravelling Jimmy to this point always felt surreal, like he was hyper-focusing in a dream and was gonna wake up at any moment. Jimmy with his shirt undone, flushed and dazed with lust. The way he’d nudge Scott’s hair out of Scott’s eyes with tender fingers, then curl the same fingers around the back of Scott’s neck to urge him on. Scott went. 

“You always have my attention,” Jimmy said, husky and hungry for it. He let out a delicious strangled sound as Scott tugged down his pants and boxers the rest of the way, getting his mouth on Jimmy’s cock. Usually, Scott would tease, tuck his tongue under foreskin, suck kisses down the vein. Before Jimmy, it’d been a long time since Scott had given a guy head and he’d kinda missed it. Showing off was fun. 

Jimmy twitched against Scott with a guttural sound, keyed up. Scott decided to be kind. He took Jimmy into his mouth, sloppy at first, getting him wet. Turned out Scott was just as impatient for this as Jimmy was. He eased Jimmy over his tongue, a smooth heavy slide to the back of his throat. Welcomed the pressure when it was there, the unyielding weight. Scott tucked his fingers over what he couldn’t fit and hollowed his cheeks. Didn’t care that he was being loud, didn’t care about the ache in his knees, about the ache in his jaw. He let Jimmy jerk against him, use his mouth, scratching at Jimmy’s hips until Jimmy was taking him in shallow thrusts, thighs tense against Scott’s shoulders. 

“Scott,” Jimmy was gasping, “ _Scott_.” Scott moaned and, mouth full, he choked on the sound, choked down his lust. He shoved a hand into his own boxers, fingers too dry for comfort but it felt good to fuck into his hand along with the rhythm that Jimmy was setting. To give himself over and breathe in someone else’s pleasure, listen to the joyous hungry cadence of ecstasy. Scott’s cock pulsed in his grip, making a sticky mess of his fingers. He must have made a strangled sound of his own. Jimmy whispered something incredulous. Fingers tightened around the back of Scott’s head. Couple of thrusts and Jimmy was going still, keeping Scott still, getting him to swallow. 

They fit badly on the couch, and usually, Jimmy would complain. Today he was sleepy enough that Scott was the one who had to clean up, get Jimmy’s shoes off, and tuck them both in, pulling an old blanket over their shoulders as he tangled their legs together. Even exhausted, Jimmy asked, yawning, “Kids all right?” 

“Far as I can tell, yeah.” 

“Far as you can tell?” Trust Jimmy to get worried even though he was almost dozing off.

“Kamala’s been tense recently. Think it’s the history paper.” 

“Oh, that.” Jimmy yawned again. He mumbled something about tutoring, only to drop off halfway with a light snore. Scott nuzzled a kiss over Jimmy’s jaw, over to the edge of his mouth. Just as Scott was about to shift over and sleep, Jimmy’s phone buzzed between them. Jimmy didn’t wake up, but Scott got the phone out of Jimmy’s suit jacket, then pulled the jacket off Jimmy’s shoulders, draping it over the side of the couch. He was about to set the phone on the coffee table when he caught sight of the messages. They were from Kamala. 

**Kamala** : jimmy  
**Kamala** : u there?  
**Kamala** : sorry it’s late  
**Kamala** : can I talk to u

Huh. Was something wrong? Scott looked around, but couldn’t immediately remember where his phone was. He shook Jimmy lightly by the shoulder, but Jimmy didn’t wake up. “Hey. Jimmy,” Scott said. He shook Jimmy again, and this time Jimmy blinked blearily awake. 

“Hmmwhat?”

“Kamala.” Scott showed Jimmy his phone. Jimmy frowned, unlocking it, but dozed off as he was typing an answer. 

Scott checked the phone, just in case. Finished Jimmy’s answer. 

**Jimmy** : Yes?

Maybe Scott should just ask for details. 

**Jimmy** : wat’s wrong  
**Jimmy** : u ok?  
**Kamala** : er  
**Kamala** : wait wat  
**Jimmy** : wat?  
**Kamala** : ……  
**Kamala** : SCOTT??  
**Jimmy** : busted  
**Kamala** : WOW  
**Jimmy** : but jimmy rly is here if u nd  
**Jimmy** : how u guess it was me  
**Kamala** : JIMMY USES CORRECT PUNCTUATION AT ALL TIMES  
**Jimmy** : o  
**Jimmy** : Oh.  
**Jimmy** : Well, what’s wrong then, young lady?  
**Kamala** : STAWP

Scott waited, but Kamala didn’t send any further messages. Grinning to himself, he locked the phone, set it on the table, curled up and went to sleep.

#

Whatever Kamala’s concerns were, she absolutely refused to say anything about it in the morning, even when Jimmy called her over breakfast. “Look what you’ve done,” Jimmy said, amused.

“I was trying to help,” Scott said, clearly contrite. He’d made coffee and a simple breakfast of fried eggs, baked beans, toast. “Does that happen often? The kids wanting to talk?”

“At first it was just their parents,” Jimmy said. He grimaced. “Glad that’s over.” 

“Difficult?”

“Very protective. Especially Mrs Moon. Over time, yeah. The kids message me now and then. Usually not Kamala, though.”

“Oh. Should I be worried?” Scott asked, genuinely concerned. 

“Maybe keep an eye on her. Think there’s no Protector stuff today since it’s a Wednesday?” At Scott’s nod, Jimmy said, “You could try to get it out of Yukio.” 

“Yukio’s been bunking over at Cindy’s,” Scott said, as he sat at the small dining table beside Jimmy, knees nudged together. 

“Really? For how long now?” Jimmy asked. That didn’t sound right.

“Uh… since ‘bout the day Hamtaro regressed. Couple of weeks and a bit?” 

Jimmy frowned. “That’s a hell of a long time to be away from the mansion.” He made a mental note to call the Professor to check it out. “Did something happen to her? She’s having problems with Ellie?”

“No? She just said she decided to take a bit of a break from having to attend Xavier’s school while doing the Protectors stuff long distance. She wanted to concentrate on what the Protectors were doing,” Scott said. 

“She doesn’t need to take a break. She teleports back to Westchester County when she needs to, thanks to Wraith.” Jimmy poked at his toast, worried. “Something definitely happened.”

“Okay, I’ll try and suss that out. She doesn’t look heartbroken or anything, if that’s what you mean.” 

“Yukio’s the hardest to read out of all of them.” Jimmy drank some coffee and unlocked his phone. He might as well check on her himself.

 **Jimmy** : Heard you’re staying with Cindy.  
**Yukio** : morning (ノ^∇^)  
**Yukio** : and yes  
**Jimmy** : Everything all right?  
**Yukio** : yes  
**Yukio** : cindy’s mum is v nice  
**Yukio** : doenjiang jigae breakfast (●´□`)♡

She sent Jimmy a picture of her and Cindy grinning hugely over a large bowl of stew in Cindy’s kitchen. Jimmy smiled and set his phone aside. “Maybe she just wanted a change of scenery,” Jimmy said. Scott nodded, though he looked a little thoughtful. “Anything else happen recently that I should know?”

“Nope. Kids are busy trying to build a more efficient way to extract quantum energy. And arguing over math. Or rather, Yukio and Amadeus argue over math and everyone else just stares at them. Including me.” 

“Sounds about normal.” Jimmy polished off his breakfast. “Hamtaro regressing is a very good sign, but there hasn’t been much progress these couple of weeks. Director May’s been pushing to have the project forwarded to Dr Banner and Reed Richards.” 

“Who’s Richards?” Scott asked. 

“Another scientist. Nobel prize for Physics, a few years back. I told her I’d talk to the kids.” 

Scott shook his head. “They’re not going to agree.” 

“They don’t need to be taken off the project—though they should be, it’s dangerous. Still, I see that we can’t stop them from doing what they want, as you’ve told me many times. Amadeus will just need to learn how to share.” 

“Yeah, he’s going to love being told that,” Scott said dryly. “Let me talk to them tomorrow, all right?” 

“Sure.”

“Also, it’s _only_ been two weeks. To refine tech that nobody’s ever thought of before, let alone tried making,” Scott pointed out. 

“I understand that. But if Amadeus’ instincts are right—and they often are—the resonance residue is fading from everywhere in the universe. Means the window to do anything about the Snap is closing. I’m proud that they’ve made it this far, and I’m going to make sure they get the credit that they’re due, but it’s better to have more minds on the project.” 

“Ah, right. Makes sense.” Scott nodded. “I’ll tell them that. Actually, I don’t think they’d mind. If they’re not taken off the project in turn, I don’t see why they’d mind sharing their work.”

“You’d be surprised,” Jimmy said wryly. “Amadeus is… well. Incredibly intelligent people sometimes have difficulties relating to everyone else. Before the Protectors, Amadeus didn’t have any friends his age outside of video games. Even then, he only really talked to Ned.” Speaking of Amadeus.

 **Jimmy** : Everything okay?  
**Amadeus** : guten morgen  
**Jimmy** : Wie geht es dir?  
**Amadeus** : danke, gut.  
**Amadeus** : und dir?  
**Jimmy** : Ganz gut.  
**Amadeus** : we shld switch to something more challenging  
**Amadeus** : like latin  
**Jimmy** : Latin isn’t that difficult given the languages you already know.  
**Amadeus** : pssh 

“Ned’s nice. You should put him officially on the team,” Scott said, with a pointed glance at Jimmy over his mug. 

“Getting around to it,” Jimmy said. He did check up on Ned, though. 

**Jimmy** : Everything okay?  
**Ned** : ya  
**Ned** : y  
**Jimmy** : Just checking in.  
**Ned** : cool  
**Ned** : punch moar nazis 

“You mean it’s a paperwork thing?” Scott asked, wrinkling his nose. 

“Cindy asked the same thing. But no. More like a budget thing.” 

**Jimmy** : Everything okay?  
**Cindy** : wat do u mean by everything  
**Cindy** : define ok  
**Jimmy** : This again?  
**Cindy** : r u living with scott now  
**Jimmy** : What?  
**Cindy** : u hear stories ;3  
**Jimmy** : No, I’m not living with Scott.  
**Cindy** : pity  
**Cindy** : u know  
**Cindy** : i didn’t think he was ur type

Jimmy coughed. He knew Cindy was just trying to get a rise from him. It was irritating how many times she tended to succeed and distract him. “A budget thing? Really?” Scott asked skeptically.

“You’d be surprised,” Jimmy said. Kamala had guessed that it was a budget thing. Speaking of which. 

**Jimmy** : Hey.  
**Jimmy** : Sorry about yesterday, I was really tired.  
**Jimmy** : Are you all right?  
**Kamala** : yeh  
**Kamala** : im ok  
**Kamala** : ahaha  
**Kamala** : u and scott!!  
**Kamala** : i mean, we kinda knew already  
**Kamala** : but isnt this like ur fbi phone  
**Kamala** : lol  
**Jimmy** : What did you want to talk about?  
**Kamala** : um  
**Kamala** : this is going to sound v weird but  
**Kamala** : can i get thor’s number  
**Jimmy** : Really.  
**Jimmy** : Dare I ask why?  
**Kamala** : just in case  
**Kamala** : research purposes  
**Kamala** : serious

Jimmy rubbed his temple. Scott stared at him in concern. “Something up?” 

“Turns out Kamala just wanted Thor’s phone number. For ‘research purposes’, she says,” Jimmy said sourly. 

Scott started to laugh. “Well,” he said, in between chuckling, “I could see how that might be a real question.” 

“She’s a child. Thor’s considerably older than she is.” Jimmy paused. “He’s considerably older than this city, even.”

“Let’s not go there. Every time I really think about what Thor really is I get a headache. Eh, what’s the harm. Just give her his number. It’ll be cute. Besides, Thor deals with fans all the time. He can’t walk a block down New York without getting stopped by women, according to Bruce.”

“I don’t think Thor carries a phone,” Jimmy said. He made a face. “And I’d rather not even think about it.” 

**Jimmy** : No.  
**Kamala** : awww  
**Kamala** : it’s not for creepy purposes  
**Kamala** : it’s for just in case  
**Jimmy** : Just in case of what?  
**Kamala** : research  
**Jimmy** : No.  
**Kamala** : :( 

“Maybe it’s a legitimate purpose,” Scott said, though he grinned mischievously.

“Don’t you start.” Jimmy paused. “And don’t think about giving her Captain Rogers’ phone number or something as a consolation prize.” 

Scott looked a little guilty.


	9. Chapter 9

The first inkling Scott had that maybe the kids were keeping something from him was when multi-armed alien monsters attacked. Scott had been out jogging when there’d been a flash behind some hedges, then said alien jumped him out of nowhere. Later Scott would play up having dodged to run free, but what really happened was he’d been disoriented by the flash of light and tripped over his own feet, falling flat on the grass, which was why the lunging alien shot safely overhead. 

Scrambling up with a yelp, Scott turned around to sprint back down the street. He’d left his suit at home—not that it’d have helped even if he’d brought it with him. The alien thing behind him roared. Scott peeked behind him. It was catching up, somehow charging him on fours, its secondary arms held close to its body. Its bullet-shaped head was mostly teeth. 

Too close—it hurled itself into a leap, hands outstretched—then shrieked as something blasted it out of the air. To the left, a scowling, frail old man in sunglasses was racking a shotgun. “Gerronout!” he yelled. “G’awn then!” The alien shook itself, hissing. It turned menacingly towards the old man, hesitated, then turned and continued its charge at Scott. 

Ah fuck. Scott had never covered the road back to his house this quickly before. He jinked around trees, diving over cars. The creature liked to charge in straight lines. If Scott could get out of sight, out of reach at the last moment, it usually hesitated, as though having to reorient itself remotely. Something was calling the shots. 

_Home!_ Scott didn’t bother fiddling with the door—he ducked his head down and threw himself through the window, wincing at the glass. Rolling to his feet, gritting his teeth at the stings, Scott charged over to the couch just as the alien smashed through his front door like it was made of paper. It shrilled, clawed fingers flexing—then looked down as the disc Scott tossed stuck to its chest.

Shrunken down, the creature squeaked angrily as Scott scooped it up. Scrambling to the kitchen, Scott grabbed the closest tupperware he could see and tipped the thing into it, jamming the lid on top. It didn’t seem smart enough to scrape off the disc. Instead, it kept bumping furiously against the plastic, squeaking. Scott put the tupperware in the sink and breathed out, trying to will his heart rate back under control. 

Jimmy pulled up outside Scott’s house in a screech of tyres just as Scott finished getting his suit on, his helmet tucked under an arm. “Thank God,” Jimmy said in relief, as he looked through the door and saw Scott. He was balanced on a sleek yellow motorcycle.

“One of them came after you too?”

“Yeah, while I was in the Bureau’s HQ. Took a bit of taking down. Get on. Call the kids, I’ve been trying to reach them.” 

Scott pulled his helmet on and got on the bike behind Jimmy. He tried Kamala first. No answer. Yukio. Amadeus. 

Ned picked up. “ _ThereIsAGiantAlienInTheHouse_ ,” he hissed, all in one breath. 

Curled against Jimmy’s back, Scott felt him tense. “Where?” Jimmy barked. 

“Warehouse!” 

“What are you doing there?” Scott asked, even as Jimmy took a hard right at the next junction. “It’s Friday. You’re supposed to be at school!” He paused. “The hell did you guys do?” He paused again. “Everyone OK?”

“Cindy kicks _sooo_ much ass,” Ned said, which Scott hoped was a good sign. 

“We’ll be there in fifteen,” Jimmy said, and sped up. 

“By the time they arrived the fight was over. Several alien-things were restrained on the floor with webbing and one was spiked on fencing, motionless. “They just need to pass a strength check and they’d break out,” Ned said, as Jimmy squealed the motorcycle to a halt inside the warehouse. 

“Jimmy! And Scott,” Kamala said, breaking out in a grin of relief. The lab itself was mostly wrecked, workbenches overturned, many of Amadeus’ devices shattered on the ground. The reactor had survived along with Hamtaro’s cage. The kids looked bruised but OK. Scott breathed out a huge sigh of relief. 

“No other attacks were called over the police frequency on the way here,” Jimmy said, as he got off the motorcycle, “so what the heck did you guys just do?” 

“Um, we can explain,” Amadeus said, then he flinched as all the webbed alien-things started to laugh in sync. Their voices deepened to a deep, rumbling sound. 

“I have warned you,” said the creatures, “and you have ignored my kindness.”

“ _Kindness?_ ” Cindy hissed through her mask. “You killed my _father!_ ”

“And yet your life you still have, child.” The closest creature to Cindy broke free of her webbing. She shot more at its feet, but it walked through them as though it was tissue. The others were breaking free, and as they came closer together their forms began to lose definition, melding together like putty. Something bared incisors in a bone-like skull from deep within the mass. “Do you not see? Look how easy it has been to herd all of you into one place.”

“The hell is that?” Scott whispered to Jimmy, but Jimmy ignored him, drawing his gun. 

“Tell me one thing,” Amadeus said shakily. His hands were sheathed in the same strange matrix of tiny black dots that Jimmy had last seen floating in canisters in his basement lab. 

“Speak,” said the conglomerate creature.

“Are you just, like, really bad at math?” Amadeus demanded. He ignored Ned’s shocked stare, balling his fists and stepping forward. “Or bad at logic? So you had this really terrible idea, right? Where uh, you thought maybe if you murdered half the people in the universe you’d solve the resource problem?”

“Amadeus,” Jimmy said, strained. 

“Tread carefully, child,” warned the creature. 

Amadeus bulled on. “I saw the Avengers notes. That was seriously your logic? Not like, a mistranslation or something? Because, what the fuck, dude! Murdering half the living things in the world would’ve destroyed ecosystems across the universe? Or does your species only count non-living stuff as resources? Cos. Maybe I’m applying human logic to a nonhuman but. Math is universal, man. Dividing everything by two does not fucking solve shit. If you had this super powerful reality bending glove why didn’t you just fucking snap your fingers and double all the resources in the universe?” 

In the ringing silence that remained, Cindy straightened up. “Wow,” she said, clapping Amadeus on the shoulder, “even if we’re gonna die, I take back every uncharitable thought I ever had about you.” 

The creature shook itself, gaining definition. It was huge now, the spikes on its back brushing the ceiling of the warehouse, its two sets of arms heavily packed with muscle. Its head was a bullet-shaped skull full of teeth, and it had a long, spiked tail. “Enough,” the creature growled. “You have no idea what I have sacrificed for this. I will _not_ let you unmake it.” 

“So why aren’t you here?” Amadeus asked challengingly. “You were here in person before.” 

The creature hissed but didn’t reply. “I think you’re worried,” Kamala said. 

“You’re scared of something else,” Ned said.

“And this time you can’t snap your fingers and fix it,” Yukio said quietly.

“What the hell is going on?” Scott asked, trying not to sound plaintive. 

“You gave us a good idea when you said we should share our work with Dr Banner and Dr Richards,” Amadeus said, with a sharp smile. “We thought. Why just them? Why not _everyone_?”

“We’ve been broadcasting our work everywhere. Not just on Earth. We hacked a bunch of satellites and broadcast the math. Aimed it at a few star clusters in Thor’s notes,” Yukio said. She smiled tightly. “Even if we die, it’s only a matter of time before we win anyway.” 

The creature snarled. It charged for Amadeus, eating up the ground in great loping strides. Scott lunged, shrinking down as he went. Used the kinetic burst to barrel into the creature’s jaw, staggering it. It slowed but didn’t stop. Yukio’s whip caught around one of its ankles, and electricity sparked down its length and earthed itself in its body. The creature stumbled but growled, jerking the whip out of Yukio’s grip, lashing out with it, knocking Cindy out of the air in mid-leap. Jimmy dived to catch her.

Scott thumbed his belt. Getting big always hurt, in a bone-straining back of the mind ache. He got to the creature’s size and slugged it across the jaw, trying to get his hands around its throat. It shrieked—Ned and Amadeus had fired something from their bot-encased hands at its feet—and staggered briefly, but recovered its balance and caught Scott in a heavy right hook that rocked Scott back. Scott was slower in this size, too slow. 

As Scott tried to shrink down to a smaller size, the creature hissed, starting to topple. Kamala had wrapped elongated arms around its knees and pulled. Scott hauled it down to the floor, grabbing its skull and twisting sharply as he went. There was a loud snap. The monster twitched and went still.

Jimmy was helping Cindy to her feet. He looked around and exhaled. “Someone. Explain.”

#

“It’s because his logic is bad that he didn’t see the broadcast thing as a fake-out,” Amadeus said once they were in the air. “It’d take light years for the info to do anyone else in the universe any good. We’re kinda really lucky and unlucky at the same time that the bad guy doesn’t understand basic causality.”

“Lucky doesn’t even cover it,” Jimmy growled. “Also, there have been other entities observing Earth since it’s ground zero for the Snap.” 

Kamala and Cindy ignored them, still walking around the plane in amazement. “Wooow,” Cindy said, and looked over at Jimmy. “I take back all the times I thought you had a really boring job.” 

Ned blinked from where he was strapped into a seat. “Jimmy’s an _FBI Agent_. And a secret SHIELD agent apparently. Which part of either of those jobs is boring?”

“Well I didn’t know about the SHIELD thing! And all he did as an FBI agent was herd us around.” Cindy stuck her tongue out. Jimmy sniffed. He was flying the plane with Yukio in the co-pilot’s seat. 

“Maybe you guys should strap in,” Scott said, in what Kamala privately thought of as the Dad Pitch of Voice. The sleek plane with strange angular lines had landed vertically in the space outside the warehouse some time after Jimmy had demanded an explanation from everyone and now they were headed… somewhere. 

“Where are we going again?” Kamala asked, dutifully strapping into a seat. 

“Classified location, like I said,” Jimmy said.

“Just, um, if I’m not gonna be home for dinner, I really need to tell my mum,” Kamala said. 

“Me too,” Cindy said. She glanced at the others. “Probably not just us.” 

“That will be handled. SHIELD also has agents watching your homes. Just in case.” Jimmy paused. “We don’t have anyone watching the Mansion,” he told Yukio apologetically, “but we sent the Professor a warning and he’s aware of the situation.”

“I know,” Yukio said. She looked a little tired. 

**Kamala** : yukio? u ok?  
**Yukio** : ellie is pissed  
**Yukio** : over me not telling her about thanos  
**Cindy** : oh  
**Yukio** : she’ll get over it but  
**Yukio** : sigh ヾ(￣o￣;)

“‘That will be handled’ is probably not gonna cut it with my mum,” Amadeus said. He grinned, though. “This plane isn’t purely Earth tech is it? We sure as hell don’t have supersonic planes this small.” 

“It _is_ Earth tech,” Jimmy said, “and it’s classified. Which means if everyone could please refrain from ‘documenting’ this experience on social media, that would be much appreciated.” 

Ned looked a little hunted as he put his phone away. “Are we going off-planet?” he asked.

“What? No. Does this look like a starship to you?” Jimmy asked. 

“Just checking.” Ned deflated. 

“We’re going to a CIA blacksite? Somewhere in the middle of the ocean? Ooh. Secret island?” Cindy asked eagerly. 

“Been to one of those, and it is not fun,” Scott said, making a face. “Kinda hope we’re not about to do that, to be honest.” 

“No, we’re not going to a blacksite,” Jimmy said, checking the navigation, “and Amadeus, I know you’re trying to guess where we are and where we’re headed. Stop.” 

“I’m not _guessing_ ,” Amadeus muttered, “I _calculate_ that we’re heading towards Africa.” 

Jimmy sighed. Scott stared at Jimmy. “Seriously?”

“Contingency plans,” Jimmy said. 

“What! Africa! My mum is going to be _way_ pissed,” Cindy yelped. “I’ve never been outside America before! I don’t even have a passport!” 

“I don’t either,” Kamala said weakly. 

“Where did you guys think we were going on a supersonic plane?” Amadeus told her. 

“To New York! Avengers building or something,” Cindy said, eyeballing the back of Jimmy’s chair. “What the hell is in Africa?” 

“We’re going to Wakanda, right?” Ned asked quietly. “To the concentrated resonance point. I mean, what else could it be.” 

“Huge bits of that report was really redacted even on the Avengers server,” Yukio said, nibbling on her lower lip. “Are the Avengers going to meet us there?”

“I was told to bring all of you to a specified location,” Jimmy said. His voice was weirdly flat. “I wasn’t told why. So. Try to sleep. We’ll be there in a few hours.” Scott got up from his seat, walking to the front of the plane. He bent to whisper something to Jimmy, but Jimmy shook his head. 

Kamala tried to ignore them, turning to Amadeus. “The aliens started showing up when we sent Astrofish 4.0 into the Quantum Realm, right?” she whispered.

He shook his head. “No. I don’t think that was it. We’ve sent 4.0 into the Realm before and nothing happened. What was everyone doing?”

“Homework,” Kamala said. 

“Checking Instagram,” Cindy said. 

“Set up to monitor Astrofish while Deus prepped it to shrink.” Ned looked over at the co-pilot’s seat. “Yukio, what were you doing? Right before the attack?” 

Yukio rubbed her chin. “Uhm. Deus and I set up a kind of GitHub-esque thing for this project, and Dr Richards was uploading his interpretation of some of the Asgardian theories of resonance translated to code. I was correcting one of the files? That can’t be it.” 

“Maybe it wasn’t.” Kamala lowered her voice. “Thanos said the Stones told him when we brought Hamtaro back. Maybe it wasn’t us but Thanos thought it was?” 

“Who knows. That dude needs to get a grip.” Amadeus was checking his phone. “No reception, so I can’t check with Dr Banner… speaking of getting a grip. Would he be able to make another glove?” 

“Thor’s notes aren’t really clear about that bit,” Cindy said. 

“Apparently a lot of the stuff you can wiki about Thor and the Norse Pantheon are kinda true but not really. Which was cool? I think,” Ned said. 

“I’m glad that you still find some part of this situation ‘cool’,” Jimmy said, his tone still flat. 

Kamala and Cindy exchanged glances, but it was Amadeus who said, “Uh, on a scale of one to ten, where one is irritated and ten is Angry Bird, how mad are you with us?” 

“I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed,” Jimmy said. Scott made as if to say something and Jimmy shook his head sharply, cutting Scott off. “You children took a risk that you didn’t need to. You should have told us immediately when Thanos first showed up. You didn’t just put yourselves at risk—you probably put all of San Francisco at risk. It’s a wonder he didn’t invade with all the forces he had at hand.” 

**Kamala** : lecturreeee  
**Cindy** : whoop  
**Cindy** : my mum is RLY gonna b RLY pissed  
**Kamala** : ikr  
**Kamala** : sorry yukio  
**Kamala** : um and I hope ellie gets over it  
**Yukio** : she’ll be fine  
**Yukio** : talked her out of flying out to meet me  
**Yukio** : this is a cool plane  
**Yukio** : giving me ideas for modding the X-plane  
**Kamala** : o thats rite! u guys have ur own 

“Are you girls listening?” Jimmy asked. 

“Yes,” they chorused, with varying degrees of enthusiasm. 

**Kamala** : u sure it wasn’t what u were coding?  
**Yukio** : idk  
**Yukio** : we shrunk down all of Deus’ stuff anyway  
**Yukio** : we can do an inventory  
**Cindy** : think ned and deus are doing that atm

“We’re not going into witness protection or something right?” Kamala asked as the thought struck her. “‘Cos that happened to someone in the mosque, he like witnessed something, then he had to disappear and go into hiding for a couple of years.” 

“No, nothing like that,” Jimmy said. At least the lecture seemed over… Nope. Jimmy exhaled and started talking again, something about reckless unauthorised broadcasting. Scott, looking pained, kept trying to interject. Ned and Amadeus were busy on laptops. 

**Cindy** : i’m thinking we’re going to a super secret lab  
**Kamala** : was wondering y ppl were fighting in wakanda  
**Kamala** : like i googled it and it still doesn’t even have much of a wiki page  
**Kamala** : even after that UN speech by king t’challa  
**Cindy** : they’re supposed to b super advanced or something right  
**Kamala** : yeah  
**Kamala** : but all they’ve done so far is buy stuff in oakland. they haven’t opened their borders  
**Kamala** : they were still renegotiating trade agreements and reassessing their alignment in the UN African bloc and such when Thanos did the thing  
**Yukio** : wow you really like foreign policy  
**Cindy** : kamala gonna be president some day  
**Yukio** : i believe it  
**Kamala** : ha ha  
**Kamala** : muslim woc? long time. there are no muslim women in congress atm even  
**Cindy** : when u are madam president dun forget us ;3 

Scott finally gave up and sat down. “This why you wanted Thor’s phone number?” he asked Kamala.

“Yes?” Kamala said. She paused. “Wait, why did you guys think I wanted the number?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kamala Khan really does become President of the USA in one of the Marvel futures. :)


	10. Chapter 10

Jimmy brought the plane neatly down at what looked like a temporary base set up on sprawling grassland next to a forest and tucked away from the battlefield. Wakanda had tried its best to clear up the aftermath of battle by removing the bodies of their dead, and Thanos’ Outriders. They’d left everything else though—the great machines, the sloughed earth. The ground was riddled with pale silvery stakes, each a death-marker of someone who had died to the Snap. 

“Before we leave the plane,” Jimmy said, turning to the kids, “I want to set some ground rules.”

“Oh my _God_ ,” Cindy said. 

“Are you serious,” Amadeus said, scowling. They were clustered excitedly by the plane door. Scott bit down on a laugh, boxes of Amadeus’ shrunken-down equipment in hand. 

“Very serious,” Jimmy said, setting his fists on his hips. “Firstly, and I cannot stress this enough, no pictures. You will be able to contact your parents through the SHIELD server where necessary but we will be monitoring your output. This is a classified joint covert operation between SHIELD and Wakanda.”

“Okay,” Kamala said. She slowly raised a hand.

“Yes, Kamala.”

“Do we have to go masks off then?” Kamala asked. 

“That’s up to you,” Jimmy said, with a quick smile, “as is whether you want to go by codenames or not.” 

Kamala glanced at Cindy, who shrugged and gave a half-shake of her head. “Too many people I don’t know,” Cindy said. She left her mask on. 

“I guess,” Kamala said, a little reluctantly. She didn’t make a move towards her mask. 

“Secondly,” Jimmy said, “you’re all to stay close. The Wakandans are unhappy enough that foreigners have been a constant presence in their country since the Snap, even if we’ve all only been allowed in a restricted area centred around ground zero. Matters are still volatile politically under Princess-Regent Shuri.” 

“Shouldn’t she be the Queen?” Cindy asked. 

Jimmy shrugged. “It’s not our place to speculate on Wakandan politics. Or to offer an opinion. Keep that in mind as well.” 

“So what are we here to do?” Ned asked.

“You’re here because the Princess-Regent requested your presence,” Jimmy said, his jaw set. 

“And you’re not happy about that… why?” Scott asked. 

“My personal opinions on the matter aren’t relevant,” Jimmy said. He ignored the kids’ glances at each other, heading over to release the lock on the door. Scott caught his wrist. 

“Come on,” Scott said quietly. “What’s wrong?” 

“I’m not looking forward to explaining to a group of parents why the children they entrusted me with had to… to face down an all-powerful cosmic entity and…” Jimmy exhaled loudly. “I didn’t think this would happen. When I first pushed for the Initiative I was hoping to just. Give a group of really promising young people a leg up to opportunities that they might never otherwise have. Not set something in motion that ends with kids facing _Thanos_.”

“Not exactly your fault,” Amadeus said. 

Jimmy gave him a pained look. “By grossly underestimating all of you—” He hesitated as Cindy stepped over and hugged him. 

“Hey. It’s okay. Thanks for everything,” Cindy said. 

“Ooh, group hug!” Yukio stepped over and curled her arms around them both. Scott laughed, setting down the boxes even as Ned nudged over and pulled a reluctant Amadeus into the hug, Kamala stretching her hands around everyone and giggling. 

“Okay, that’s enough,” Jimmy said, though the ugly knot of tension in his gut eased a little. He squirmed until the kids let up. “Remember the ground rules.” He unlocked the plane door, which automatically fed a ramp down to the ground floor. Letting the kids go through first, Jimmy was about to follow them down when Scott tugged him a step out of view of the people below, brushing a quick kiss on his mouth. 

“Things are gonna be OK,” Scott whispered. 

“I’ll believe that when I see it,” Jimmy said, though he kissed Scott back and headed down the ramp. The kids were standing in an awestruck cluster in the middle of the controlled chaos around them. Border tribesmen kept watch on graceful spires that wouldn’t have struck Jimmy as temporary if he hadn’t seen the reports, their electric blue shieldcloaks draped over their shoulders. There weren’t many other Wakandans involved in the project outside of a few Mining Tribesmen and the Princess-Regent’s scientists. Most of the forward base was manned by SHIELD representatives.

“Shouldn’t Dr Banner be here?” Scott asked, his helmet balanced on the boxes he was carrying. 

“Said he preferred New York,” Jimmy said. He straightened up as a Wakandan dressed in a green vest and plated leggings strode over from the control centre by the runway. She was petite and beautiful, her hair cut short nearly to her skull, ringblades looped at her belt. “This is Commander Nakia,” Jimmy said, as Nakia got close. “She’s in charge of the forward base.”

Nakia grinned. “Why so formal? You SHIELD agents. Just ‘Nakia’ will do. Welcome to Wakanda,” she told the kids. “I’ve heard all about you.” 

“Good things?” Kamala asked cautiously, as shell-shocked as the others. 

This made Nakia laugh. “Very good things. Come. The Princess wants to meet you.” 

“Wow. We’re actually meeting a Princess?” Ned asked, eyes wide. “Like right now? Uh. I kinda really regret wearing jeans and an old shirt today.”

“Same,” Amadeus said. 

“She’s not going to mind,” Nakia assured them. 

“Pinch me,” Kamala mouthed to Yukio as they followed Nakia closely. Scott was busy staring at one of the sleek Wakandan hovercrafts as it slid noiselessly past the command tent, and had to be nudged forward by Jimmy.

“What _is_ this place,” Scott murmured. “Shit. Now I really feel like Rip van Winkle. Disappear briefly and then wake back up to what the hell.” 

“Wakanda has been technologically advanced for a long time, they just hid it until recently. Did you miss King T’Challa’s UN speech? It made a huge splash. That would’ve happened before your incident,” Jimmy said.

Scott looked embarrassed. “I don’t really pay attention to global politics? Also, I was uh. Under house arrest at the time, so. I was kinda just mainly catching up on Netflix and learning magic tricks and stuff.” 

The Wakandans had built a protective tent over Ground Zero using an iteration of their shield tech, one that could go opaque and weatherproof when needed. It filtered through the trees that were left without interfering with a single leaf, and the floor had been carpeted over with smooth, biodegradable temporary flooring. The laboratory was crowded with staff, Wakandan and SHIELD both. Dora Milaje lined the room at neat intervals, the shaven-headed warrior women highly visible in their bright red mail. 

“Don’t stare,” Jimmy hissed at the kids. 

“I can’t help it!” Amadeus whispered back. “I can’t even guess what half of all this tech is for.” 

“Staring is normal, it’s okay,” Nakia said gently. “I still stare now and then myself whenever I’m in here.” 

Princess-Regent Shuri straightened up from a workbench and smiled as they got closer. Her hair was caught tightly against her skull in thick coils, and to the kids’ visible relief, she was dressed more or less as informally as they were, in a blue blouse and gray leggings. 

“Are we supposed to bow?” Cindy whispered to Jimmy, then flushed as Shuri started to laugh. 

“No need to bow. I’m Shuri. You’re…?” Shuri looked over at Cindy.

Shyly, she tipped down her mask. “Cindy.” The introductions went round quickly, then Shuri drifted over to the large cylindrical machine in the centre of the lab with Yukio and Amadeus, talking theorems. They quickly grew animated, and the conversation just as quickly grew beyond Jimmy’s immediate comprehension. Ned and Cindy were busy gawking at something large and pod-like on a workbench. 

Kamala had sidled over to Nakia, her mask off. “I saw your TED talk,” she said nervously. “I mean, I watched your TED talk. On YouTube. I didn’t go. I mean, I wish I could’ve gone.” 

Nakia smiled at her. “Was it bad? You can tell me that it’s bad.”

“Bad? It was awesome. I totally agree. With what you said, about the global community and the responsibility that really wealthy countries have. Um! I don’t know if you saw. The September report that was submitted to the UN under resolution 36/30, I mean, um—“

“On vigilantism and bigotry disguised as activism?” Nakia said. Kamala brightened up, and Scott watched, bemused, as they started talking about policy. He set the box of Amadeus’ things on a clear portion of the workbench and retreated back to Jimmy’s side. 

“You been here before?” Scott murmured. 

“Once. It’s not really part of my scope,” Jimmy said, “and the Wakandans enforce a strict foreigner quota. Security purposes.” 

“What do they have to be concerned about? The tech outside’s like nothing I’ve seen,” Scott said. 

Jimmy gave him a surprised look. “History hasn’t exactly been kind to this region of the world,” he said delicately, and Scott flushed. 

“Oh. Right.” 

“Haven’t you met King T’Challa?” Jimmy asked.

“Well, not in a, well, we didn’t talk, just got very briefly introduced? After the fact. Then Cap and Sergeant Barnes and Tony Stark went off on their own and things became kinda a mess overall.” Scott looked around again. “Why _are_ we here?” 

“To merge two theoretical approaches to the same problem, apparently.” Jimmy nodded at where Shuri, Yukio, and Amadeus were now huddled over a console. “Now we wait and see.”

#

Dinner was awesome. Kamala had never eaten most of the kinds of food on offer at the trestle tables set up, and she rather regretted Jimmy’s social media/photos moratorium. Somehow her parents hadn’t freaked out. Nor had anyone’s. Captain America had personally put through a video call to each parental unit, which magically had a narcotic effect.

“My mum recorded the conversation and uploaded it to her Facebook,” Amadeus said, still in awe. They’d found a quiet place to sit on a bunch of crates just outside the lab, overlooking the forest. “And then my aunties were like, if Amadeus is soooo smart, why isn’t he studying to be a doctor?” 

Cindy burst out laughing. Yukio giggled, cross-legged on the highest crate with a bowl of veggie stew and jollof rice. “ _My_ aunties asked whether Captain America could introduce me to a nice girl,” Ned said gloomily. “Thankfully not to his face. I’m only sixteen! I shouldn’t even be dating.”

“Where’s Jimmy and Scott?” Kamala asked. 

Cindy grinned wickedly. “They sneak off somewhere?” 

“Really don’t think Jimmy would do that. He’s probably reporting in or something,” Kamala said. To her disappointment, Nakia had wandered off quickly, busy with other work. “Maybe we shouldn’t have run off from the canteen.” 

“Pssh, who wants to eat there.” Shuri giggled as Amadeus yelped and Kamala nearly fell off the crate. 

“Where’d you come from?” Cindy looked around. There was a crease in the wall of the tent. “Did you crawl out from under the lab tent? Uh, your Highness. Your Majesty?”

“Don’t do the honorifics. I get embarrassed.” Shuri climbed up to sit on the crate next to Yukio with her own food. One of the Dora Milaje peeked around the corner, frowned, and repositioned to stay within line of sight. “How’s everyone?”

“Still shocked that we’re here,” Kamala admitted. “Though! We’re really grateful.” 

“My brother’s always trying to get me to have more friends my age,” Shuri said, though her smile faded briefly at the reminder. 

“How’s things going along?” Cindy asked curiously. “Are we close? Or?”

“We solved the main sticking points together an hour ago,” Yukio said, and ate another mouthful. 

“With our powers combined and all that,” Ned said. 

Kamala froze. “What.” 

“We just haven’t figured out what to do about Thanos.” Shuri made a face. “Especially since nobody knows how to get hold of Thor. He’s been offworld for a while.” 

“We could… pray? He’s a God, right?” Cindy said.

“I so wish you were joking.” Yukio giggled. 

“The problem’s still that freaking Time stone,” Amadeus said wearily. “This is why I freaking hate stories with time machine plot devices and we’re freaking _living in one_. Whatever we do, he can ctrl-z on reality and undo it, right?” 

“Probably,” Kamala said, “but I have an idea.”

#

“I can’t believe Captain America is really right there,” Ned said in a stage whisper over the No Adults channel. “Like. He’s a real person, standing right there. _Like_. When you have detention in my school you have to watch videos of him being Disappointed, but he is right here, a real person. I don’t even.”

Ned hadn’t come with them on the visit to Avengers HQ. “Go over and talk to him,” Kamala said, grinning. 

“Are you kidding? He just reminds me of detention,” Ned hissed, then hesitated. “You guys OK in there?”

“Pretty bored,” Cindy said, her tension betrayed only by the edge in her voice. 

Kamala tried not to stare too hard at the strange atmosphere in the Quantum Realm, or at the huge monsters floating close by, so far ignoring them. Princess Shuri had edited something in the weave of Kamala’s suit so that it would stretch with her when she did. Which meant she got to accompany Yukio and Cindy into the Realm. Scott had protested, but had grudgingly agreed that he wasn’t much use in the Quantum Realm without innate powers. Jimmy had only stared at them with pained resignation. 

“Almost done,” Yukio said apologetically. She was busy assembling the Quantum Link, the machine coming together quickly. Kamala and Cindy had tried to help, but they weren’t much use out of doing simple assembly. “And… there!” Yukio flicked a switch, and the cube-like machine started to glow with rings of silver. “How’s that?” 

If Kamala concentrated, she could see a thin blue line feed upwards and out of the cube, spiraling into nothing. “We’re online and synced,” Amadeus said.

“Second shipment inbound,” Shuri said. There was a faint popping sound, then the car-sized, remora-like Astrofish 5.0 appeared, crates magnetised to its flat surface. Kamala helped unpack, Cindy and Yukio assembled. It was clumsy work with gloves, and they were all sweating into their suits by the time everything was set up to Yukio’s satisfaction. 

Tiny versions of the Astrofish shot away from under 5.0, soon disappearing into the textured horizon. Cindy glanced at the feed they were linked to on the console. “Still all clear,” she said.

“Everyone all right down there?” Jimmy asked on the general channel. He was trying to sound calm, but the worry in his voice was obvious. 

“We’re good.” Kamala glanced at the others, who nodded. “Ready to rock.” 

There was a pause, then Shuri said, “Ready up here. Initiation in five. Four. Three.” Kamala tried to breathe slowly, looking outwards at the Quantum Realm. She began to wish that she’d used the bathroom again right before shrinking down into the Realm. 

“I’m gonna pee,” Cindy whispered. Kamala bit down on the inside of her cheek to stifle her laugh. 

“One,” Yukio mouthed along with Shuri. She pulled the lever inset into the Quantum Link. There was a rumbling purr from the cube, its lights growing brighter. The thin blue thread in the air flickered, then widened, growing brighter and brighter until Kamala had to avert her eyes. Feeding through one reality to the next. 

“The resonance is threading from Ground Zero,” Scott said. “Something’s happening to the air. Like a mirage.” 

“It’s working!” Amadeus said excitedly. “The effect of the Time stone, it’s disengaging—what was that?”

“Guys?” Cindy said. There’d been a background roar of sound, a crackling thud. Kamala reflexively looked up, but didn’t see anything on their end other than slow-moving tardigrades.

“Hostiles inbound at Sector One.” Captain America had such a calm, even voice. “Bypassing the barrier. No sign of Thanos.” 

“What!” Shuri could be heard typing furiously. “I upgraded the barrier!” 

“It’s the effect of the Reality stone. Look at the outlines.” That was Jimmy. “Ready to engage in Sector Two.” 

“There’s a lot fewer of these things than there was before,” Cap said briskly, “but don’t let your guard down. Steady. _Now_.” 

There was a click, and the channel got quieter. “Going to cut us out of the general channel for now,” Ned said. He sounded breathless with excitement. “Still no Thor, by the way.”

“The Gods help those who help themselves?” Cindy suggested and started giggling, even when Kamala rolled her eyes and elbowed her. She went still, staring at the screen. “There he is,” Cindy said. On the feed of Minifish-8 was a familiar purple-and-gold humanoid, looking around with a scowl.

“Good news is, disguising our location by pinging resonance feedback to the Minifish shoal worked,” Yukio said quietly. “Bad news is, the Space stone clearly works down here. Maybe even the Reality stone, since he’s the ‘right’ size.” Thanos had disappeared, reappearing on the feed of Minifish-13. Kamala limbered up, increasing the heft and weight of her fists. 

Minifish-9. Minifish-20. “Still no result up above?” Yukio asked. 

“Not yet.” Amadeus sucked in a slow breath. “Maybe you guys should come back.” 

“No. We’re staying,” Cindy said firmly. Neither Kamala nor Yukio disagreed. Minifish-18. Minifish-3. Thanos was getting angry: his jaw was clenched tight. He disappeared. There was a crashing sound that made Kamala flinch, and a shout from Shuri. “Guys?” Cindy asked. 

“Really _big_ alien,” Ned said in a rush. 

“Lots of people are stabbing it with spears, we’re OK—oh hell—” There was a crackling sound and an electronic whine, cutting Amadeus off. The lights on Astrofish 5.0 went dull. 

“Is that a good sign?” Kamala asked, strained.

“Nope. It’s on reserve power.” Yukio was typing furiously. “Deus. Deus!” There was only a faint static. “Comms are down.” 

“Quantum Link still feeding energy out?” Cindy asked. Yukio nodded. “Then we’re good,” she said. Kamala forced down her nerves, the bubble of panic that told her that Janet van Dyne had been lost in the Quantum Realm for decades, that nobody would find them here. She breathed out. Her fear and panic were fading. They’d done all they could, the best that they could. Now they just needed to buy time. 

“I love you guys,” Kamala said. 

“Meeting you two—and the others—has been the best thing that happened to me this year,” Yukio said. She squeezed Cindy’s hand. Cindy curled an arm around Kamala and hugged her in turn. 

“Hard same,” Cindy said. They waited.

The space beyond Astrofish 5.0 was empty, then it wasn’t. Thanos stared at them, then at their equipment. “Well played,” he said. His smile was sharp. “You are braver than many who are older than your years. I will remember that. Last chance to surrender.” 

“How about _you_ surrender?” Kamala shot back, shaky at first, then confident as Cindy squeezed her hand. “You’ve lost.”

“We’ll see.” Thanos raised his hand and clenched his fist. The Time stone began to glow. The Quantum Link brightened—and Kamala let out the breath she was holding as nothing else happened. Thanos scowled. “What trickery…?” 

“Remember, we told you to surrender,” Cindy said brightly, and charged. Thanos blocked her first punch and tore easily out of her webbing, grabbing her by the ankle as she swung a kick at him and flinging her bodily away. Kamala yelped, stretching quickly to grab Cindy, even as Yukio slung her whip around the gloved hand and sent a crackle of lightning down the length, making Thanos snarl in pain and shake it violently off his wrist. Cindy cursed. She used Kamala’s stretched arm as a launching point, springing back into action. Thanos caught a punch across his jaw and blinked. Then he laughed. 

The Space stone glowed. Thanos blurred away. He reappeared behind Yukio. At Kamala’s shout, Yukio ducked out of the heavy punch at her head and blocked the next, going blow for blow for a few seconds until Thanos feinted and slammed a fist into her stomach. As Yukio doubled up, Cindy leaped over. She was faster, superhumanly stronger. Thanos was actually being driven back. Kamala propped Yukio hastily against the Quantum Link and stretched. She let Cindy force Thanos on the defensive, then at a whistle, she sized up her fist and punched down as hard as she could as Cindy leaped aside. 

Cindy gasped. Thanos had stopped Kamala’s fist with an outstretched palm. The Reality stone glowed and Kamala was smaller, shrinking fast. She backed away hastily and stretched back up to his size. “Not bad,” Thanos said, and hit Kamala across the jaw, bouncing her back into Astrofish 5.0. Something cracked in her ribs and she spat blood onto the strange earth. 

“Kamala!” Cindy threw high punches, forcing up Thanos’ guard. Yukio looped her whip against an ankle, hauling sharply. Thanos chuckled again, jerking back, hauling Yukio off balance, but she recovered and sent another charge down the whip. Nothing. Thanos was playing with them. He was smiling with a weird sort of malicious, paternal amusement. 

“Enough,” Thanos said. The Mind Stone glowed. Cindy stopped in mid-run, blinking slowly. She didn’t budge as Thanos grabbed her by the throat and lifted her up into the air. Kamala was vaguely aware that she was snarling something, shouting. She stretched wildly, looping her hands around the gauntlet—

—the world stretched and fell away into a reddish gloom. A temple arch stood on muddied stone, with a green-skinned girl-child before it who was now a child, then a woman, then a child again. She stared at Kamala in surprise, then she began to laugh, joyous, reckless. 

“Something has broken,” she said, and held up her hands. She as not speaking English but Kamala understood her anyway. “Come, child. Open the door.”

“Who are you?” Kamala asked, looking around wildly. “Where’s Thanos?”

The girl’s lip curled. “I was Gamora,” she said, and her voice burned with bitterness. “Now I am something more. Open the door. Let me help you kill him as he has killed me.” 

“He’s too strong. I don’t know how. I—” Kamala flinched as Gamora grabbed her hands, and now she knew. She closed her eyes, flattened her flesh and fluid bone tightly over the world—the gauntlet—and the stone went with it. 

Thanos staggered back on the ugly ground, wide-eyed with astonishment. The large yellow stone on the back of his palm was gone. Slowly, Kamala turned up her right hand. It was inset onto the back of hers. It should hurt, but it didn’t. Kamala tried to touch it with her other hand, only for her fingers to stop inches away. 

_Don’t_ , Gamora murmured in her mind. _You’re only mortal._

“It’s in my hand!” Kamala hissed. She looked around. Yukio was trying to get to her feet by the Link. Cindy was unconscious near Astrofish 5.0. Thanos must have tossed her away when Kamala had taken the stone. 

_Not truly. Or you would be destroyed. Now. Help me,_ Gamora commanded. 

“How is that possible?” Thanos demanded, glaring at Kamala. 

“For someone older than some of the stars, Titan, you have a pathetic imagination,” Kamala said, with Gamora twinned to her. They lunged, feinting, feinting again as Thanos ducked away, stretching their gemmed fist into a club and slugging him across the ribs. Thanos cracked through one of the reddish pillars. The Space stone glowed and he disappeared in mid-fall. Thanos reappeared at a respectful distance, his eyes narrowed. 

“Gamora,” he said. Thanos sounded—grieved, if Kamala had to put a word to it. 

“Not Gamora any longer, am I?” They raised the gemmed palm before their face. The Mind stone glowed, and they laughed. “Oh, you know this, _father_. The Stones don’t work on each other.” 

“They’d work on the people I need them to work on,” Thanos said. Yukio let out a whimpering sound. Kamala whirled around—Yukio was staggering towards the Quantum Link’s console. They clenched their hand, correcting the flow, and Yukio collapsed on her knees with a gasp, clutching at her chest. 

They went for Thanos again. This time he matched them blow for blow. Kamala was shrugging off punches that would have thrown her aside, dealing jabs that should have broken a normal human’s bones. Thanos was growing angrier. His swings were wilder, roaring as he threw his weight into them. They threw a left hook that he caught with the gauntleted fist. “ _Enough_ ,” Thanos snarled. 

“Exactly enough,” Kamala-Gamora said, and concentrated. The Infinity Stone in their palm brightened. Dwarven-made starmetal could not be sundered, not normally. But the glove that had been made had been made out of fear, its final forging cursed with the death-curse of the species that Thanos had almost wiped out in its name. The Soul stone grew brighter yet, its influence burrowing deeper, calling up the grudges of ghosts. Thanos roared, trying to haul himself back. 

The gauntlet came apart. First the fingers, then the palm. The flesh beneath it was fragmenting, turning to dust. Thanos tore himself away with a terrible wet sound, gritting his teeth, his eyes wide. Then he turned around and fled.

Kamala forced herself to stand still as Gamora snarled in her head. “Let him go,” Kamala gasped. 

_Give me my revenge_ , Gamora hissed.

“You have it already. He’s lost. I _won’t_ kill for you. For anyone. And you can’t make me.” 

Gamora’s anger burned in her mind and in her hand. Kamala grabbed at her wrist with a stifled cry of pain. Just as quickly as it came, the pain eased, followed by a soothing coolness and a sense of apology. The yellow stone fell free from her hand, joining the scattered pieces of the gauntlet on the ground. 

“—guys?” Amadeus asked over the comm. “Guys?” 

“Here,” Kamala said. 

“Thank God.” Jimmy’s voice hitched a little. “Cindy? Yukio?”

“They’re fine. How’s things up there?” Kamala asked.

“Everyone’s back. We did it,” Scott said, and let out a hoarse laugh. “I can’t believe that we did it. You guys did it.” 

“Um, the giant aliens?” Kamala asked.

“They’re gone. Thor arrived fashionably late and beat up all the things. It was seriously cool. Uh. You guys OK?” Ned asked nervously.

“Yeah. We fought Thanos,” Yukio said, completely deadpan.

“You guys did _what_?” Scott demanded. “You said that in the small chance that Thanos went after you, he’d be drawn away from the Quantum Link by the tiny fish!”

“Minifish,” Amadeus muttered. “And yeah, that was the plan.” 

“The real trigger for reversal had to be pulled in the Quantum Realm,” Ned said, “or Thanos would’ve just shown up here to undo it with the Time stone.” 

Jimmy blew out an exasperated sigh. “Yes, you guys told me that, but the Princess also said there wouldn't be any real risk! What happened to him?”

“He ran away,” Yukio said. She was sitting on the Astrofish. “Kamala kicked his ass.”

“I had help,” Kamala said. She went to scoop Cindy up gently, settling her on the Astrofish as well. “Um… Jimmy, what do we do with all the stones and stuff?”

There was a long silence. Then Jimmy said, in a slightly strangled tone, “How would you guys like to meet Thor?”


	11. Chapter 11

epilogue

It took a week for Jimmy to finally have time enough for Scott, and only because Scott pushed for it. They had dinner down the street at a quiet French bistro and moved to Jimmy’s afterward, though they didn’t do more than curl up on Jimmy’s couch and kiss until Scott got sleepy. Waking up in bed with someone always felt surreal, as though Jimmy had fallen sideways through to a parallel dimension, one where he’d bothered to have a life outside of the next mission.

Scott mumbled something and yawned as Jimmy nuzzled kisses over his throat. “Morning,” he said, grinning and sleepy and gorgeously tousled. This part of Jimmy’s life also felt surreal. Scott always looked like he was waking up for a magazine spread. Jimmy kissed the morning stubble on Scott’s jaw and chuckled as he was pulled up for a kiss, morning breath and all. Scott’s morning wood pressed against Jimmy’s hip and Scott moaned as Jimmy shifted to rub his thigh against it. 

“Morning,” Jimmy breathed against Scott’s ear, nipping the lobe and tucking his tongue under the shell. Scott shivered and pulled impatiently at Jimmy’s shirt until he helped Scott pull it off with a laugh. 

“What?” Scott asked with mock confusion, tucking his thumbs pointedly into the hem of Jimmy’s boxers. 

“I didn’t say anything.” Jimmy plucked at Scott’s shirt. “Off.” 

“Ooh, bossy, I like that. Yes sir,” Scott said, with a lazy grin. He peeled the shirt off slowly, sliding it over his abs, the gorgeous toned muscle. Jimmy had no idea how Scott’s body looked this good—as far as he could tell, Scott’s only idea of exercise involved a daily run, and he ate a hell of a lot of junk food when left to himself. 

“Don’t start,” Jimmy said, looking his fill. He bent to lick at the hollow of Scott’s throat, tasting the faint salty beading of sweat. Scott hooked an ankle around the small of Jimmy’s back, trying to nudge him on, but Jimmy ignored him, nibbling down, rolling one of Scott’s nipples over his tongue until it hardened and Scott pulled in a tiny gasp. 

“C’mon,” Scott breathed, his hands clutched over Jimmy’s shoulders. “I’ve been waiting all week. Hurry this up. Before you get called back into work or something.” 

“It’s Sunday.”

“Yeah, don’t you have church?” Scott was handsome enough that he could work a pout without looking ridiculous. 

“Normally, yes. I begged off for today.”

Scott started grinning mischievously. “Aww, really?” He squeezed Jimmy over his boxers, rubbing his palm down the bulge. “Never thought I’d see the day.” He licked a playful stripe over Jimmy’s cheek. “How ‘bout you lead me on to temptation, pastor.” 

Jimmy rolled his eyes and tried to marshal some reproach, but ended up sinking down over Scott and trying to stifle a fit of laughter. “You’re terrible.” 

“Says the _youth pastor_ skipping Sunday School to lie in sin, ooh.”

“I told the priest I couldn’t make it to Sunday School for a while because I thought it’d take more than a week to clean things up, but the Director made everyone take Sunday off at the very last minute,” Jimmy admitted. He kissed Scott on the throat. “Sorry that the real reason isn’t that romantic. Or scandalous.” 

“Oh no, it’s totally scandalous. I mean, you could’ve still gone to the morning service.” Scott was grinning as he pinched Jimmy’s ass. 

“Everyone’s human,” Jimmy said, and kissed Scott quickly before Scott could make another quip. He could see a long, lazy Sunday unfolding slowly, perfect with Scott by his side. Scott rolled them both over to straddle Jimmy’s hips, kicking off his boxers. “You’re gorgeous,” Jimmy breathed, but compliments only made Scott laugh as though he thought Jimmy was joking. Surreal. Scott leaned over for the bedside drawer and its supplies and hissed as Jimmy spat in his palm and stroked Scott’s cock. “Move up here,” Jimmy told him. “Let me get that in my mouth.” 

Scott gasped and fumbled something in the drawer. He shifted up as he found the lube and a condom, fumbling it onto the blanket with a choked sound as Jimmy licked lazy stripes over his balls. It wasn’t the most comfortable of positions but it was worth listening to Scott’s moans as he got Scott’s cock wet with his tongue, to the whine his voice hitched into as Jimmy fed Scott’s cock into his mouth. Scott thrust carefully against him when Jimmy pushed lightly at his ass and kneaded it, taking Scott deeper, relaxing his throat. Breathing in the musk and sweat. Scott was trying to prep himself with shaky fingers, his thighs tense against Jimmy’s flanks. He pulled away when Jimmy started to suck, red-faced with a hand braced on Jimmy’s shoulders and the fingers of the other buried within him. Heaven, he was beautiful. 

Jimmy said so and Scott laughed again, shaking his head. He rolled a condom over Jimmy’s cock, biting on his lower lip. Jimmy shifted up onto his elbows for a better view and Scott grinned at him as he started to fit Jimmy’s cock inside him. “Every time you look at me like that I think I’m about to get graded on something,” Scott said, breathless as the fleshy tip pushed through with some resistance. It probably hurt, given how Scott started panting, but as Jimmy tried to get his hands on Scott’s hips to ease him off for more prep, Scott batted them away and took in another inch. 

“I’m memorising,” Jimmy said, because life was often cruel, because beautiful people only dated beautiful people and fate had a way of course-correcting when you least expected it. 

Scott grinned at him like he couldn’t believe Jimmy would want to do something like that, as though he wasn’t one of the most beautiful people Jimmy had ever met. Laughed and kissed Jimmy back with gratifying enthusiasm when Jimmy sat up to kiss him. Jimmy stroked his palms up and down Scott’s back, trying to steady his own breathing as Scott’s body squeezed him so tightly, as Scott pressed his mouth against Jimmy’s throat to chase his pulse and moan his name. As though this was everything Scott wanted and the rest of the world was irrelevant. 

When Scott eased around him, Jimmy squeezed Scott’s hips and eased his grip on them. Scott rolled his hips, fucking himself on Jimmy’s cock with tiny lazy thrusts, as though he wanted to keep Jimmy inside him for as long as possible. Jimmy kissed him, lingering and slow. He made a tight fist of his hand and tugged Scott’s cock from root to tip, jacking Scott off slowly in Scott’s chosen pace. They breathed together and forgot the morning. When Scott finally gasped and spilled into Jimmy’s grip, Jimmy was dizzy with lust and punch-drunk on more. He held Scott against him and kissed him as he came, buried everything he would have said against Scott’s mouth. 

At breakfast-moving-on-lunch, Scott slid Jimmy a set of keys. “In case I ever lock myself out of my place or something,” he said, with a playful grin that didn’t touch his eyes. 

“You have the Ant Man suit,” Jimmy said, even as his chest felt like it was squeezing down within his shirt. 

“Yeah, like that wouldn’t scandalize the neighbours, me getting changed right in the shrubbery.” 

“You could get changed in the back behind the shed,” Jimmy said. 

Scott gave him a strange look, then his smile faded. “We OK?” he asked. 

“Why do you ask?”

“Well uh, I mean, this is, OK, maybe a very roundabout and mildly manipulative way to get you to give me your spare keys again, but. I kinda thought maybe we were getting to that stage. Or. Is it too soon?” Scott asked, anxious now.

Jimmy felt like he should make a joke. Laugh things off and put Scott’s keys on the mantlepiece with the spare coins. Play it off in a friendly way. “What about Cassie?” Jimmy asked.

Scott started to frown. “What about her?” 

“How are things?”

“Well, I mean, she—and Maggie and all the others—came back with no memory of whatever had happened, so. They’re settling in? Paxton’s been discharged from the facility, even. School’s still out for now but looks like things are gonna be OK. Why?” 

“That’s good,” Jimmy said, and sipped his coffee. He glanced up as Scott grasped his wrist.

“Nope, you don’t get to go all Zen Master on me and evade the topic. What’s wrong?” 

“You’ve got your family back,” Jimmy said.

“And…?”

“Have you told them about me?” 

“No? They’ve had to sort out some stuff. Paxton had to go ask for his job back, Maggie and I were trying to sort out Cassie’s school…” Scott trailed off. “I’m making excuses. You’re right, I should’ve told them about you.”

“It’s not that,” Jimmy said patiently. “It’s absolutely understandable that you haven’t.”

“What, you think they’re gonna freak out? You’re a cop. Paxton’s a cop.” 

“I don’t think I’ve been part of any positive experiences in their lives,” Jimmy said delicately. 

“Well yeah. But you were also going easy on me and. Look. Okay. If you think we’re going too fast, I’m sorry. Just. Let me deal with my family. Don’t just give up right off the bat. Or. Is it the single dad thing that’s a problem?” Scott was visibly upset now. 

“No. Not at all, no.” Jimmy set his cup down and brushed his fingertips over Scott’s knuckles. “You needed me before. Now things are back to the way they were.”

Scott flushed and pulled his hand sharply away. “You think that’s it? That I was using you or something? Fuck. That. I’m crazy about you. Haven’t you noticed? Even the kids have.” 

Scott was…? Jimmy frowned at Scott, uncertain. Scott threw up his hands and shoved up from the table, rounding it to get to Jimmy’s side. “Wow. You really don’t fucking believe me,” Scott growled, setting his hands on Jimmy’s shoulders.

“Statistically—”

“Statistically what? It’s improbable for a deadbeat single dad pushing fifty with an unreliable income to actually legitimately…” Scott took in a slow breath. “Maybe I see your point.” 

“Don’t say that about yourself.”

“It’s all true,” Scott said. He looked defeated. Jimmy got up, pushing Scott against the table. Looked into his eyes for a long moment before kissing him. Scott’s mouth was closed, but Jimmy licked against him until he let Jimmy in. They kissed until Scott’s unhappy tension faded, until he was loose in Jimmy’s arms.

“I overthink things,” Jimmy said, when they were breathless. “Sorry.” 

“You should be sorry,” Scott mumbled. “You nearly gave me a fucking heart attack.” 

“I wish I could use the Time stone,” Jimmy said, only half-joking. “Move things back and meet you in a better way.”

“Better how?” Scott asked, bewildered.

“Anything’s got to be better than meeting you as your probation officer,” Jimmy said dryly. That got a laugh. Scott brushed a kiss over his mouth. 

“Well, when you put it that way.” Scott squeezed Jimmy’s shoulders lightly, then curled his arms over them. “I don’t regret anything. All of it.”

“Really?”

“Life’s a huge series of coincidences. Mine somehow managed to end up here. At this moment.” Scott kissed Jimmy again, lingering to taste. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I don’t regret anything.”

#

“I wish I had superpowers,” Cassie said. They were sitting in the park with Kamala and Amadeus—Jimmy, Cindy, Yukio, and Ned had gone off to buy ice cream for everyone.

“Pssh, superpowers,” Amadeus said, lying on the grass with his head pillowed on his hands. “Super overrated, you mean.”

“Kamala has superpowers,” Cassie said, scowling at him. 

“Your dad doesn’t.” Amadeus nodded at Scott. “Neither do I.”

“You’re super smart,” Cassie said, and glanced up worriedly at Scott. “And Dad’s. A dad.” 

Kamala giggled. “That made no sense whatsoever,” Amadeus said sourly. “Anyone could have superpowers then. Lots of people are smart. Lots of people are parents.” 

“Not what I meant!” Cassie said. She stuck out her tongue. 

“You don’t need to spare my feelings, Cass.” Scott grinned. “Yeah, I’m only on the Avengers because of someone else’s tech. I know that.”

“Not true,” Kamala said.

“So true,” Amadeus said. He yelped as Kamala elbowed him hard in the ribs. 

“Anyway Cindy said that Kamala was going to be President one day,” Cassie said, with the firmness of a believer, “so I hope that’s when I’m old enough to vote because I’m gonna vote for you.”

Kamala laughed. “Okay, I’ll count on you.” 

“I’ll volunteer for your campaign too! We had someone come around the other day. Door knocking. It was awesome. I asked her a lot of questions,” Cassie said. She ended up talking to Kamala about the housing problem in San Francisco, of all things. Jimmy gave them all a puzzled look when he returned balancing cones and cups. He sat beside Scott, knee-to-knee.

“Kamala’s turning my daughter into a political operative,” Scott told Jimmy. Yukio giggled. 

“She has good instincts,” Jimmy said. He smiled at Cassie, who gave him a nod. Not quite entirely friendly, but better than nothing. Cassie had taken forever to warm up to Jimmy. Even when the other kids had involved themselves. Not that they’d been asked to.

“So are we really starting a Californian branch of the Avengers?” Cindy asked curiously. “Like are the Protectors official now? We can recruit?” 

“There will possibly be a Californian branch, yes, and it will be named something else, yes. You are all still school-aged… let me finish—and as such, no. You’re all not going to be part of it. For now. Until after you graduate. From _college_.” 

“I knew it,” Amadeus said, rolling his eyes.

“You’re already in college,” Yukio said. She pursed her lips. “Ellie and I are thinking of moving to San Francisco. We’ll apply to universities over here and see.”

“What about the X-people?” Ned asked. 

Yukio shrugged. “They’re very nice. But I like you guys more. And Ellie wanted to try living here for a bit. Change of scene.” 

“The Protectors will probably be expanded to include a few other people your age. But ultimately yes, should you choose to continue in this capacity after graduating from college, all of you are welcome to join Atlas,” Jimmy said. 

“How about me? I’ve already graduated from college,” Scott said. He grinned as Jimmy sighed. 

“Pym tech’s kind of still illegal or something, right?” Amadeus asked. “Or is that complicated?”

“Little complicated,” Scott said. The last he heard, the Pyms were working something out with SHIELD. Grudgingly. 

“What did Thor do with the stuff?” Ned asked. “Anyone got word yet? Cos as fun as all of this has been, I kinda don’t want to go through it again.” 

“It’s classified,” Jimmy said.

“Aww.” Cassie made a face. 

“Come on.” Scott nudged Jimmy playfully as he ate his ice-cream. “If you don’t tell, I’m gonna.” 

“If _you_ want to be the one explaining to Captain Rogers why certain highly classified secrets ended up all over Instagram, feel free,” Jimmy said sharply.

“Pssh, like we’d do that,” Amadeus said.

“That’d be more of a Twitter leak thing, not Instagram,” Cindy said. She smirked as Jimmy shook his head. 

Before Jimmy could start one of his lectures, Scott leaned over and kissed Jimmy stickily on the cheek, making him yelp and flinch and glare. The kids laughed, even Cassie. Scott winked at Jimmy and watched him snort, hiding a smile by eating some of his scoop. Yeah. Things were gonna work out just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> twitter: manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent.tumblr.com


End file.
